25 chapters
6 hour read
Selected Chapters
25 chapters
PREFACE.
PREFACE.
It may not be amiss to remark, in explanation of the startling and sensational title chosen for this production, that logic has not yet succeeded in framing a title-page which shall clearly indicate the nature of a book. The greatest adepts have frequently taken refuge in some fortuitous word, which has served their purpose better than the best results of their analysis. So it was in the present case. "Danger!" is a thrilling and warning word, suggestive of the locomotive headlight, and especial
3 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL
It is to be presumed that the readers of this book will expect a few words on a subject "on which," as Lord Byron somewhere remarks, "all men are supposed to be fluent and none agreeable—self." However much the inclination and, I might add, temptation may run in the direction of fluency and diffuseness in this case, my utterance shall be as brief as possible. I, William F. Howe, founder of the law firm of Howe & Hummel, was born in Shawmut street, in Boston, Mass., on the seventh day of
7 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER I.
Some of the City's Ancient Prisons — How Malefactors were Formerly Housed — Ancient Bridewells and Modern Jails. From old Dutch and Knickerbocker records it appears that as far back as the year 1600 there existed a place for the confinement of malefactors in the City of New York. At that early date in its history the town must certainly have been restricted to a half dozen or so of narrow, crooked streets, in the immediate vicinity of what is now known as the Bowling Green. The population did no
5 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER II.
The Past and Present Gangs of the City—How and Where They Herd—Prominent Characters that Have Passed into History. New York, from being the largest city on the western hemisphere; in almost hourly communication with every part of the known world; the vast wealth of its merchants; elegant storehouses crowded with the choicest and most costly goods, manufactured fabrics, and every kind of valuable representing money; with its great banks, whose vaults and safes contain more bullion than could be t
12 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER III.
The Pretty Flower and News Girls—The Young Wharf Rats and their Eventful Lives—How they all Live, where they Come From, and where they finally Finish their Career. To the wealthy resident of Fifth avenue and other noted fashionable thoroughfares, the incidents of actual every-day life that are here revealed will read like a revelation. To the merchant and the business man they may probably read like romance. To the thrifty mechanic, however, who occupies a vastly different social sphere, who hur
20 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER IV.
Their Fascinations, Foibles and Temptations. Since the time when Mary Rogers, the beautiful cigar girl of Broadway, met her sad fate over in Hoboken, the pretty shop girls of New York have contributed more than their full quota to the city's contemporaneous history. They have figured in connection with many of its social romances and domestic infelicities, as well as with its scandals and its crimes—secret and revealed. In Gotham's grave and gay aspects—in its comedy, its tragedy, and its melo-d
11 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER V.
Concert Saloons and how they are Managed—How the Pretty Waitresses Live and upon Whom, and how the Unwary are Fleeced and Beguiled—A Midnight Visit to one of the Dives. Readers of the works of Le Sage will recall the polite devil which the ingenious novelist releases from his captivity in a vial, for the purpose of disclosing to the world the true inwardness of society in Spain. Something of the role of this communicative imp we purpose to enact in this chapter, the subject matter of which, we m
20 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VI.
Who they are and how they are made—Their Methods of Operating and upon whom—The Fashionable Kleptomaniac and her opposite—The Modern Devices of Female Thieves. Many persons contend that certain kinds of criminals inherit their law-breaking propensities. There are others, less charitably disposed, perhaps, who strenuously insist that all criminals, without exception, are simply born with a natural desire to be bad, and would not be otherwise if they could; that they are prone and susceptible to t
15 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VII.
Extraordinary Revelations—A Wealthy Kleptomaniac in the Toils of a Black-mailing Detective. In the issue of the New York World, bearing date Saturday, May 11, 1867, appeared a long article criticising, exposing, and severely condemning the methods of the city's detective police. "A detective," said the writer, "is presumed to be alike active, capable and honest, and were he such, he would be a public benefactor; but as he is too often either ignorant, indolent, or positively dishonest, he become
6 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER VIII.
The Inmates—The Victims—The Gains—Complete Exposure of the Manner of Operations, and how Unsuspecting Persons are Robbed. Some years since respectable New York was startled and horrified by the recitals of criminal life, which, in the fulfillment of a disagreeable public duty, the daily newspapers printed in their news columns. The stirring appeal for the suppression of the evil then made by the press to the moral sentiment of the community, was backed by the judiciary, by the money and influenc
13 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER IX.
Kale Fisher, the Famous Mazeppa, involved — Manager Hemmings charged by Fast-paced Mrs. Bethune with Larceny. A good many years since, at a fashionable boardinghouse in Philadelphia, a handsome Adonis-shapen young man, well and favorably known by the name of George Hemmings, became acquainted with a member of the fairer sex who had scarcely passed "sweet sixteen," and was accredited with a bountiful supply of beauty, named then Eliza Garrett. An intimacy at once sprung up between the two, which
30 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER X.
Captain Hazard's Gushing Letters—Breakers on a Matrimonial Lee Shore—He is Grounded in Divorce Shoals. Aforetime, when the mariner was entirely dependent on the winds and the tides to make his voyage, he was, as everybody knows, a peculiarly impulsive, generous, faithful and credulous mortal in his love affairs. Once ashore, he spliced the main-brace, sneered oathfully at land-lubbers, hitched up his trousers and ran alongside the first trim-looking craft who angled for his attentions—and his mo
18 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XI.
The Romance of Baron Henri Arnous de Reviere, and "The Buckeye Baroness," Helene Stille. During one October, our offices were visited by a lady who had achieved considerable distinction, as well as notoriety, in Parisian society. This was Mrs. Helene Cecille Stille, otherwise the "Baroness de Reviere," and sometimes designated "The Buckeye Baroness," She came for the purpose of prosecuting a charge against the Baron de Reviere of "wrongful conversion and unlawful detention of personal property,"
12 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XII.
Reader, did you ever try to estimate the malign influence upon society of one single fallen woman? Did you ever endeavor to calculate the evils of such a leaven stealthily disseminating its influence in a community? Woman, courted, flattered, fondled, tempted and deceived, becomes in turn the terrible Nemesis—the insatiate Avenger of her sex! Armed with a power which is all but irresistible, and stripped of that which alone can retain and purify her influence, she steps upon the arena of life re
10 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIII.
A Matter of Untold History—The Terrible Machinery of the Law as a Means of Persecution—Edwin James's Rascality. Our practice has furnished many illustrations of Thackeray's shrewd remark, that "Most men have sailed near the dangerous isles of the Sirens at some time of their lives, and some have come away thence wanting a strait-waistcoat." The following is a case in point, which occurred in the time of the Tweed régime. The position, wealth and influence of the somewhat mature Lothario, backed
11 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XIV.
CHAPTER XIV.
Clandestine Meetings at Seemingly Respectable Resorts—The "Introduction House." The revelations not long since published in the London Pall Mall Gazette revealed fashionable aristocratic depravity in the British metropolis in a shamefully disreputable light, and disclosed the services of the professional procuress in all their repulsive loathsomeness. Although we do not possess titled libertines at elegant leisure here, there can be no manner of doubt that the procuress plies her vocation among
4 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XV.
CHAPTER XV.
Specimen Advertisements—The Bait Held Out, and the Fish who are Expected to Bite. The vile practices, the monstrous impudence, the cruel rapacity and enormous gains of the obscene tribe of quacks, together with the mischief they do, and the ruin they work, would require much more space to adequately ventilate than we can devote to it here. The healing art is a noble one, and duly qualified men, interested in their profession, are public benefactors; but the despicable race of charlatans not only
16 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XVI.
CHAPTER XVI.
The Career of Madame Restell—Rosensweig's Good Luck. "Such is the fate of artless maid. Sweet flow'ret of the rural shade! By love's simplicity betrayed, And guileless trust. Till she, like thee, all soiled, is laid Low in the dust." — Burns, "To a Mountain Daisy." Love's young dream—the dream of the ages—has sometimes a fearful awakening. In her "guileless trust" and unsuspecting ignorance, a young woman weaves a light web of folly and vain hopes, which one day closes a
15 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XVII.
CHAPTER XVII.
The Chicanery of Divorce Specialists—How Divorce Laws Vary in Certain States—Sweeping Amendments Necessary—Illustrative Cases. A large proportion of the marital infelicity now so alarmingly prevalent in this country is no doubt caused by the mal-administration of our divorce laws, and by the demoralizing discord between the legislative statutes of the various States on the subject of divorce. While in the middle and a portion of the Eastern and Southern States, the conditions legally imposed, be
13 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XVIII.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Who Practice it, How it is Perpetrated, and upon Whom—The Birds who are Caught and the Fowlers who Ensnare them—With other Interesting Matters on the same Subject. There is a class of crimes prevalent in the metropolis, which, from its secret character and the apparent respectability of those engaged in it, rarely ever sees the light of exposure. Some of these offenses are hushed through the influence or prominence of the operators. In others the facts are never divulged, because the victims pre
11 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XIX.
CHAPTER XIX.
The "Javerts," "Old Sleuths" and "Buckets" of Fiction as Contrasted with the Genuine Article—Popular Notions of Detective Work Altogether Erroneous—An Ex-Detective's Views—The Divorce Detective. We are told that "all the world loves a lover," and it is, perhaps, equally true that most people like to read the details of clever detective exploits. The deeds of criminals naturally awaken the emotions of horror, fear, curiosity and awe in proportion to their heinousness and the mystery by which they
21 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XX.
CHAPTER XX.
The Delusins that Control the Devotees of Policy—What the Mathematical Chances are Against the Players—Tricks in French Pools—"Bucking the Tiger"—"Ropers-in"—How Strangers are Victimized. "And there were several offered any bet, Or that he would, or that he would not come; For most men (till by losing rendered sager), Will back their own opinions with a wager." —Byron's "Beppo." Some people are born gamblers, and resemble Jim Smiley, of Mark Twain's "J
16 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXI.
CHAPTER XXI.
The Last Ingenious Scheme to Fool the Police—Flat-Houses Turned into Gambling Houses—"Stud-Horse Poker," and "Hide the Heart." The following timely article on the newest racket in gambling in the City of New York is from the Sunday Mercury of June 20, 1886: "Since the gambling houses in the upper part of the city, where night games flourished, have been closed and their business almost entirely suspended, a new method of operations has been introduced. A Mercury reporter a few days ago was hurry
6 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXII.
CHAPTER XXII.
Depravity of Life in Billy McGlory's—A Three Hours' Visit to the Place—Degraded Men and Lost Women Who are Nightly in This Criminal Whirlpool. The following from the Cincinnati Enquirer tells its own story: "Slumming in New York always begins with a trip to Billy McGlory's. It is a Hester street dive. What The. Allen was thought to be in the days when he was paraded as 'the wickedest man in New York,' and what Harry Hill was thought to be in the days when the good old deacons from the West used
11 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter
CHAPTER XXIII.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Contemporaneous Records and Memoranda of Interesting Cases. Miss Louise Ruff was a tall, fair-complexioned young lady of twenty-two, with a handsome form, lovely shoulders, handsome arms and bewitching address. Her family was well known on the east side of the town, and she had received a fairly liberal education. Miss Ruff, two or three years previous to the legal proceedings here chronicled, had the good or bad fortune to form the acquaintance of Mr. Julius Westfall, the well-to do proprietor
29 minute read
Read Chapter
Read Chapter