T H E S I N S O F N E W Y O R K
As "Exposed" by the Police Gazette
By: Edward Van Emery
Chapter 4
Veracities From Vice's Varieties
The Big Bandit and Yegg Men and Racketeer Stars of the Seventies
ASSORTED LIST OF EVIL DEEDS AND EVIL DOERS COLLECTED BY GAZETTE
CORRESPONDENTS IN ALL QUARTERS
One did not have to be an especially heinous malefactor to be accorded a
paragraph in the Police Gazette department known as "Vice's Varieties," and
which, the subheading informed, was "An Assorted List of Evil Deeds and Evil
Doers Collected by Gazette Correspondents in all Quarters." All one had to do
was to get caught at what one should not have been doing and dishonorable
mention was assured. But, unless you were a sporting character of prominence
or a barber or barkeeper of parts, to be accorded picture space you had to be
good, that is in a nefarious sense. Before going into any fairly extended
mention of those who enjoyed real prestige in Mr. Fox's Hall of Ill-Fame, let
us look rather thoroughly through just one copy of Mr. Fox's weekly and see
what we shall see.
On the front page of the issue of January 25, 1879, for example, the lone
illustration gives us a peep behind the scenes of the theater. What we glimpse
of the stage from the wings leads to the belief that a violent drama is in
performance, though accompanying details prove otherwise. A very
wicked-looking customer with a knife of which the blade is fully a foot
long, is apparently in the act of doing some deadly perforating of the person
of a lady whom he has grasped by the throat. The foreground of the picture
displays a female in tights and good health who is being attended by her
waiting-maid the while she puts on the finishing touches of her make-up with
which to "dazzle the anxiously expectant audience." It would seem that in
those days even the ladies of the stage did their "making up" in private
rather than public. The lady, we learn, is a belle of the burlesque stage. On
page two there are twenty or so lines in explanation of the picture, which
apprises us that we have not altogether misunderstood what the artist had
intended to convey.
"Slight as the incident appears," we read, "it illustrates a by no means
unimportant matter to the petted favorite of the footlights. No matter how
elaborate her make-up and how much the care and taste bestowed upon it in the
dressing-room by her attendant maid, she takes advantage of a waiting moment
to indulge in a characteristic female 'postscript' by adding a few finishing
touches before she bursts (we consider this word ill-chosen in conjunction
with the generous pulchritude depicted) upon the expectant gaze of the
audience she hopes to captivate, radiant with smiles and gorgeous in
apparel."
Column one of the second page is taken up with answers to "Correspondents."
The adjoining column and one-half given over to editorial comment. The first
article holds forth for more refined hangings, since a repetition of a
bungling spectacle that had happened over in Camden, N.J., gives food for
"crack-brained philanthropists to agitate against capital punishment." The
editorial which follows also has to do with hanging and is the subject of
illustration on another page and of a detailed story also. Then comes an
editorial on the "murder record for 1878." The annual homicidal report is
deplored, since it reveals that there have been 1,324 such killings, and no
less than twenty-nine lynchings.
Several items follow which have to do with the various personages whose
portraits chance to appear in this number. Richard Huntington, known as "Lofty
Dick" and by several other aliases is a forger who is now in the Ohio
Penitentiary. "His little game was to affect piety, rent the best pew in the
most fashionable church and make himself prominent generally in wealthy
religious circles as a convenient cloak for carrying out his dishonest
pursuits, which was to marry some well-to-do lamb of the flock, or fleece some
gullible member, and decamp with the proceeds. He is said to have married at
the age of fifteen. After this event he opened a cigar store in Elmira."
Then there is the sad tale of William Harney, whose likeness appears on page
13, and whose pathetic story "is exciting the sympathies of Bridgeport, Conn."
William, we learn, is a waif of sixteen who had been abandoned by a
hard-hearted father in infancy in Boston. The father utterly denied the
relationship when the youth sought him out, so the latter thereupon decides to
go to work, saying proudly: "If my father don't wish to own me, then I don't
want to have him." Which seems strangely like David Warfield's dramatic
outburst in "The Music Master" "If you don't want her, I want her!"
Orlando Casler, convicted of murder in Seward, Neb., was another whose
portrait and story appeared. Neither was interesting. Right after this come a
few lines on the weekly feature, "Favorites of the Footlights," which has to
do with the picture of Miss Minnie Palmer in her character Dot in the play
"Cricket with the picture of Miss Minnie Palmer in her character of Dot in the
play "Cricket on the Hearth." Completing this page is the department devoted
to "The Theatres." It consists of but six items of three or four lines each.
"An unapproachable bill headed by the great Tony" is offered at Tony Pastor's.
The Tivoli presents attractive variety entertainment. Lester Wallack is
offering "Ours," at his own theater. Harrigan and Hart are featuring "Mulligan
Guard Ball" in the Theatre Comique, the burning of which was soon after to be
pictured in these pages. At the Olympic another of the Charles Reade dramas,
"Never Too Late to Mend," is offered "in a style that delights theater-goers
of taste."
Page three is led with an account of "Toledo's Tragedy," which the subheads
inform us is a "story of vice and dissipation." In this report a brakeman on
the railroad making the run through Ohio takes time off to put a bullet
through the temple of his pleasure-loving wife with fatal results and also
dispatches himself in like fashion. A shorter story from Germany tells an
enlightening little tale. Two young students at Pesth have some trouble over a
young lady and the insulted party demands satisfaction by means of a duel
"after the American Fashion." This, we are informed, involves a drawing in
which the loser is bound in honor to blow his brains out within ten days. On
the ninth day the winner informs that since he is very hard up he will sell
the other the life that he is supposed to take and for the modest sum of five
florins. The loser thereupon sells the revolver with which he was about to end
his earthly existence and ransoms himself with the proceeds.
Next we have the story of a young woman who fell in love with a convicted
bank-robber on her visit to the prison in Jefferson City, Mo., and was
prepared to marry him upon his release. After a fond meeting at the prison
gate at the completion of his term, the two were rudely parted when the law
stepped in once more with another indictment.
An article picked up from an English paper deplores the tendency of youths of
good family to enter into marriage with women of the streets. "Frenchmen may
gamble and spend all their money into the demi monde, but they do not marry
into it; Americans may drink and indulge in eccentric and murderous exploits
with bowie knives, but they do not marry Phrynes and Aspasias; Germans may
drink to excess and beat their wives, but their wives are not weeds sprung
from abomination and vice. Within the last few years ten men, all holding high
social positions and bearing good names, have given their names and even
titles to creatures whose names they would never under ordinary circumstances
dare to mention before a lady. A marchioness, a duchess and the wives of two
baronets have been recruited from the ranks of les impures."
Page four, which is mainly given over to pictures, depicts "the mania of a
Negro reformer", which was dashing into a faro room and shooting the dealer to
death. His gambling reform is carried out in this startling manner at Jackson,
Tenn.. New York gets into the next picture, which has to do with an experiment
by some female workers in the temperance cause; diligent search locates no
associating story. Three other smaller pictures are reproductions of bust
photos. Mrs. Kate M. Cobb, with her front hair all crimped, is shown in
partial profile, also Welsey W. Bishop, both of whom are on trial in Norwich,
Conn., for the poisoning of the lamented Mr. Cobb, the lady's husband. In
between these two John Reilly looks bravely out in his regalia of member of
the New York Fire Department. This gallant member of Engine Company No.
17 had been killed in a fire at Broadway and Grand Street, January 14.
There is also on this page a very small story of a New York police officer's
heroism. Officer Michael Gorman dashed through the smoke and flame at 315
Delancey Street to the fourth floor and carried Mrs. Margaret Moore and her
two children to safety. The metropolitan police get further attention in a
story on this page of how Patrolmen Falvey and O'Neil pummeled each other in
the Eighteenth Precinct Station-house; the fight as pictured elsewhere must
have been a lively set-to. This picture and that of the Cobb trial monopolize
the entire back page.
Pictures of the Misses Palmer and Richmond take up more than half of page
five, which is not to be wondered at, as it shows a full view of these
beauteous stage dames. One more picture on this page has to do with a
census-taking incident; this occurs on a street-car and apparently is supposed
to speak for itself, as there is no story to be found in connection therewith.
Two items, the subjects of pictures else-where, are given space here. Out in
Modesta, California, Miss Susie Jones, "who has only seen some fourteen or
fifteen summers," shot a catamount, "one of the largest of his species." A few
lines tell of the arrest by Detective Gallagher, of the Central Station, of
Paulina Reinsch, who though but seventeen years of age, "has attained the
distinction of being the boss shoplifter of Chicago."
Half of page six features the story of the shipwreck adventure of Captain
Yates on the coast of Balize and, mostly in his own words, recites a lurid
story of being buried alive by savages. Another long story hints at scandalous
romance in the life of a certain nameless actress "very much in the public
eye," and which the fair one indignantly repudiates. After going into details
of her history it tells of her triumphs at the Union Square and other theaters
and how all lovers were forced to admire at a distance. "As the snow-flake
virgin, before it touched the ground was she, caring not for the gauds or the
glitter of that which dazzles." Just what this means the reader may have
difficulty in making out, but notwithstanding she was discovered in a
compromising position and "unveiled charms" by the proprietress of a select
apartment house where she resided and:
"Alas for the crown that the maiden erst wore,
'Twas gone, it had perished, she had it no more,"
Another account on this page, a short one, tells of the adventures in Chicago
of Griffin Skinner, a New York drummer, who was taken advantage of while
intoxicated by Belle Hamilton and Sarah Howard, a couple of light-moraled and
light-fingered young women, who had been arrested as a result. Their pictures
were shown on another page of the Gazette. Belle is not a bad-looker, in a
hardened way, but these hussies look older than the twenty and twenty-one
years they claim for their respective ages. On identical pages, both as to
story and picture, we learn of what happened to a Williamsburgh, N.Y., miss
whose mother caught her "rinking."
Page seven relates the end of the trial of the aforementioned Kate M. Cobb.
Kate was pronounced guilty of murder in the second degree, to general
surprise, after the jury had deliberated for five hours over the evidence as
to whether or no she had been guilty of putting something in the tea of her
husband that had resulted in his sudden demise. The next little item has to do
with the "swinging off" of Martin Bergin at Pottsville, Pa., "the nineteenth
of the Mollie Maguire gang to be hung for murder in this State." In the last
column a story picked up from the Cincinnati Saturday Night concerns "a pious
toper's little game," which is the purchase of whisky as medicine for an
alleged sick wife.
The entire eighth page is taken up with the gruesome depiction of a hanging at
Mauch Chunk, Pa., with an insert picture of the murder for which the death
penalty was paid. Three pictures take up page nine. Two of them have already
been referred to: they deal with the fire-defying policeman and the lady
nimrod, the one who shot the catamount. The third picture is a fearful battle
with red-hot irons between two blacksmiths of Port Jervis, N.Y., the duel
being for the smiles of a rustic coquette.
All of the tenth and part of the eleventh page are devoted to the execution
illustrated on page eight. From this story we learn that James McDonnell,
alias "The Hairy Man," and Charles Sharpe, variously known as "Slippery
Sharpe," and the " The Scraper," were among the most lawless who terrorized
the town of Audenried, a mining town in Carbon County, Pa., when the
Buckshots, predecessors of the Mollie Maguires, were at the zenith of their
power. The Audenried colliery belonging to the Lehigh and Wilkes-Barre Coal
Company was superintended by George K. Smith, and late in 1863 he was shot to
death by a gang of the Buckshots, with McDonnell and Sharpe the apparent
ring-leaders. The trouble was an outcropping of the Civil War draft, the
colliery heads being ordered to cooperate with the government in the serving
of notices on the drafted men who happened to be in the Smith employ. Manus
Gull, alias "Kelly the Bum," and others made confessions and McDonnell and
Sharpe fled and it took many years before they were finally run down by the
Pinkerton detectives. More than fifteen years dragged by before the two were
finally brought to their last account and then there was some question as to
their guilt in the matter for which they were called on to pay the penalty.
Both insisted that, while they had been guilty of many crimes, in this
particular case their hands had not fired the fatal shots that ended the life
of George K. Smith. No sooner had the death-trap been sprung than there was a
violent knocking at the prison gate and in came a messenger with a reprieve
for the two still quivering on the gibbet. Governor Hartranft had granted a
five-day reprieve. His telegram from Harrisburg reached Mauch Chunk at 10:37
a.m. The execution had been completed at 10:42. The manager of the telegraph
office had run all the way with the telegram personally and had come one
minute too late.
Following this elaborate tale on page eleven a column is devoted to the
recital of a brutal murder and the meting out of crude justice in the Alaska
town of Wrangel. From Louisville come three paragraphs on the death of a
deceitful bartender who left behind him two grieving wives. Twelve miles out
from Nashville, a farm had been the scene of a ghastly double murder: John
Whittemeyer and his wife had been put to brutal death in their bed. A baby of
twelve months and a little girl two years old were found beside the bodies.
The details are most revolting. One more execution rounds out the page.
Four pictures take up most of the space on page twelve, three of which have
already been referred to. The fourth picture, which is captioned "A Polar
Exploration," illustrates how a philandering husband was caught "with the
goods" by an ingenious and athletic wife. The story of this incident is
followed by one in a light vein from Arkansas: of two men who dropped into a
hotel and had left their wives without in buggies in the dark. Each drives off
with the wrong wife. No serious consequences occur ere the mistake is
rectified, though a quarrel gets under way in one of the buggies before the
proper exchange has been made. One of the men gets so angry at the lady he
supposes to be his wife that he says to her: "Give my teeth here; you shan't
wear them another minute!"
A romantic tale from Kentucky runs over on the thirteenth page and takes up
the space not used for picture cuts. Miss Addie Silver had been deserted on
her wedding eve by Phil Hodge because he learned that she was still in love
with Lou Foliet. Ten years later Hodge dies and Addie marries Folier. Another
story with picture, but no names mentioned, is captioned "Too Much Wet Goods
in Dry Goods District." Some of our lady shoppers are imbibing too freely, so
we are apprised.
Three columns of page fourteen are for the installment of the Mackeever
serial, "The Phantom Friend." A reporter seems to be the hero of this
narrative, which is described as a romance of New York. There is a chance
meeting on Sixtieth Street with a beautiful girl who needs aid in mounting her
horse. "The journalist stepped forward, raised his hat and offered his
assistance with the unmistakable air of a gentleman." The young man studied
with deep interest "the beautiful apparition vanishing down the street." Then
he returned his note-book to his pocket and stood for a moment in deep
thought.
"I think I'll have a kidney stew for breakfast," he said, and then suddenly
turned into the store. This ends Chapter IV. We won't go into Chapter V. The
balance of this page is devoted to the "Glimpses of Gotham" series, to which
we devote a special chapter.
Page fifteen has three columns of matter gathered together under the heading
"Vice's Varieties." This is made up of forty-odd items of varying length,
being from three to twenty-five lines and which concern murders, stage
robberies, jail breaking, affrays with knives and clubs, adultery,
embezzlement, swindling, abortion, etc.
One of the items has surprising interest. It tells of the scandal involving
one who is a temperance apostle as well as deacon of a Presbyterian Church in
Greenpoint, L.I., and a Sunday-school teacher. The deacon, a married man with
a large family, had become over-intimate with the Sunday-school teacher, a
spinster of thirty-five, as the result of which she was in what was even then
described as "an interesting condition." The amours of this fond couple, it is
charged, took place in this city (New York) at 58 Reade Street, "in the rooms
of the National Temperance Society, " where the man was employed as an agent
and the girl friend as a bookkeeper. Feminine bookkeepers must have been a
rarity back in the Seventies and this only goes to show what comes of letting
woman out into the world; anyway, carryings-on between the two were said to
have extended over a period of six years. The pious man in the case must have
been quite a lady's man, having been at one time a deacon in a Reformed Dutch
Church, "where his name became associated with that of the pastor's wife in a
rather unpleasantly notorious manner."
Jesse James and his escapades were given much attention by the Police Gazette,
and Mr. Fox seemed to take not a little pride in the fact that the leader of
the noted James Boys band was a subscriber. Jesse James sent little letters to
the publisher quite often. Just before he was brought down by a bullet by one
of his own gang, which was fired from behind his back while Jesse was in the
act of hanging a picture, the Gazette of April 1, 1882, devoted an entire
column to this interesting character.
We have received a communication from the grave. From a veritable corpse. Yes,
a dead man. Not only a dead man but a dead man who has been riddled to hash by
bullets and slashed to ribbons with bowie knives. That is, if we can believe
the newspapers. The alleged corpse that that has written us is none other than
the remains or the ghost or what is left of the much-killed Jesse James, the
terror of Missouri.
This famous bandit, train robber and desperado, has been killed so often,
however, in newspaper reports and has turned up safe and sound thereafter,
that the people of Kansas have lost faith in his death. Every time he was
reported positively defunct he would resurrect himself, board another train
at an unexpected point, clean out the express packages and the passengers and
then hie him away to the setting sun with many merry cuss words on his lips
and his thumb pivoted on his nose and his fingers agitated in insulting
suggestions to the minions of the law. Wasn't it provoking? The railroad
companies thought it was. And unprofitable, too; so they made up a pool of
$7,000 which they offered as a reward to the man who would capture or kill the
desperado.
Then began a regular hunt in all quarters of Kansas. Every clerk who had a
holiday and every tenderfoot who was out West selling tape and shoe laces
shouldered his little gun and went out to capture or slaughter the famous
bandit. After a hunt of a month a party of detectives came up with his band
and engaged in a desperate battle. Jesse himself retreated pell-mell and was
pursued by a man named Shepherd, who, as we reported last week, returned
wounded, with the bandit's pistol and bowie knife in his possession and gave
other proofs that he had killed him. The $7,000 reward was paid over and he
divided it with James and joined the band. Another grand laugh at the
authorities. More despair among the citizens. Less confidence than ever in
death.
Another hunt was started for the harlequin bandit who still played "hanky
panky" with his pursuers. On the 8th ult. a very pale and broken-up man
calling himself a deputy sheriff rushed into Moberly, Mo., and announced that
Jesse James had been captured this time after a desperate battle battle. A
sheriff's posse had surrounded him in a log cabin in a heavy-timbered district
of Missouri and after a long and bloody siege in which he had been wounded and
seven of the officers had been killed, he was obliged to surrender, owing to
his ammunition giving out. This story was received with caution, for the
public had been there before. Of course the next day Jesse turned up miles
away, safe and sound and as saucy as ever.
As Mr. James by his own avowal will not be brought to justice until he is good
and ready and as the authorities will only enrich him by offering rewards for
his slaughter, the wise course would be for Missourians to boycott him, so to
speak. Let them depopulate the State so he may have no one to kill; let them
stop all the railroads so that he may have no chance to rob. Then when he
grows weary of living alone he may, like Robinson Crusoe, have a hankering
after civilization and may of his own volition come in and go cheerily to his
dungeon cell as a variation to the monotony of his lonesome life. That is the
only way to fix it. Jesse James says so himself and surely he ought to know.
It is plain anyhow that he is the most knowing person in Missouri as far as
we've got.
George Leonidas Leslie whom the Police Gazette dubbed the "King of Bank
Robbers," and who was undoubtedly entitled to the cognomen, had his name more
prominently in the Fox journal than any other criminal with very few
exceptions. In the summer of 1884, when his partly decomposed body was found
near a landmark knows as "Tramps' Rock," located in the vicinity of Yonkers,
the Gazette gave a summary of his doings as had been reported in that paper
from time to time. Six years previous Leslie had been the master mind in the
greatest of bank rob robberies as a result of which the Manhattan Bank
Building on Bleecker Street was cleaned out of $2,506,700 in registered bonds,
$241,000 in coupon bonds, and $12,764 in cash.
According to the Gazette the robbery was planned at 861 Greene Avenue,
Brooklyn, and was a three-year job. Leslie was the directing head, and was
chiefly assisted by "Shang" Draper, though Jimmy Hope, "Red" Leary, "Banjo
Pete" Emerson, "Worcester Sam" Perris and others, along with Mother
Mandelbaum, the noted fence, had a considerable hand in the conspiracy.
Leslie, who was by descent an Englishman, was well born, and his father, a
prosperous brewer of Cincinnati, had enabled him to secure an excellent school
and university education. He early displayed exceptional mechanical genius and
an unfortunate penchant for the company of the criminal classes. He was barely
of age when he decided to turn his fine mind to the hardest task of all, the
making of easy money. He proceeded to lead a remarkable double life. Outwardly
he was the associate of respectable society, a patron of art and the theater
and a lover of good literature, which he in truth was. His appearance and
upbringing aided him well and his clothing was provided by the most
fashionable of tailors. Criminal records support all these facts; as well,
that his was the cunning that planned with his associates. 80 percent of the
great bank robberies through the Seventies and early Eighties, and which was
estimated to have amounted to around $7,000,000.
Eight years before the robbery of the Manhattan Bank, and while masquerading
as an Internal Revenue Agent, Leslie became enamored of an attractive
Philadelphia miss, Mary Henrietta Coath, who was then only fifteen years of
age. He married the trusting girl and hardly was the honeymoon over when he
engineered the robbery of the South Kensington National Bank, which netted
more than $100,000. in cash. The marriage had gone into the fifth year before
Mrs. Leslie came to know the true character of her husband. She clung to him,
notwithstanding. Her trust was poorly repaid, for Leslie's fancy was a roving
one and he devoted himself to the sister of Johnny Irving as well as the
mistress of "Shang" Draper, his associates in many important robberies. This
philandering is said to have led to his murder.
The rare ingenuity of Leslie was never better exemplified than in the
Manhattan Bank job. The premises of the bank were surveyed until every inch of
the place was known and the plans of the interior and surroundings would have
done credit to an architect. After months of observation and investigation the
name of the vault-maker was learned and a duplicate of the style of the
combination lock was secured from the maker. Leslie experimented with the lock
until he had discovered a method whereby the tumblers could be thrown out of
gear. Then months more were spent in introducing a confederate into the ervice
of the bank. Leslie was then able to get into the bank during the
night and bore a hole through the indicator dial, which permitted him to
manipulate thegears. But something went wrong with his workmanship and the
safe could not be opened by the bank authorities the following morning, and
the
maker of the safe was called in and the lock was completely changed and many
added months
of work was required. In the end when the "job" was completed it was done with
the aid of tools of the finest workmanship, several of which had been
specially made by Leslie. Hope did most of the actual interior work. So
expeditiously did the job have to be done that the compartments containing the
great amount of cash which the burglars were really after could not be
reached. The bank succeeded in replacing the registered securities, so that
Leslie and his pals did not fare anywhere nearly as well as they had hoped.
But with the ready cash stolen and the rifling of depositors' boxes the bank's
loss was believed to have been in excess of $100,000.
While George Leonidas Leslie managed to steer fairly clear of the police, all
of his partners were not so fortunate and every one of them knew the interior
of a prison cell, but not for long, as a rule. Political connivance, legal
brains, bribery, or daring and ingenuity in jail-breaking nearly always gave
freedom. Two such escapes that startled the good citizens of New York deserve
nothing.
"Red" Leary is out again! The burglar who is famous for his exploits on two
continents and who was about to be extradited to Massachusetts for the
Northampton Bank robbery, took French leave of the Ludlow Street Jail about
eleven o'clock on the night of May 7 (1879). Investigation revealed that rooms
had been taken on the fifth floor of the tenement at 76 Ludlow Street, which
immediately adjoins the jail. From here a passage had been burrowed with
mathematical precision through five feet of wall into a water-closet set
against the end of a corridor on the second floor of the jail, and when it was
decided that "Red" should go to Massachusetts, "Red" decided to go next door,
and did so.
Two years later, after some time abroad, Leary returned to this country and
was recaptured in Brooklyn on February 4, 1881. The Gazette comment on the
capture follows:
Since the memorable morning when "Red" Leary took French leave of Ludlow
Street Jail the public has heard nothing of him. For a long time after the
escape Kate Leary, his wife, was kept under espionage; but, aside from the
fact that she wore a maroon-colored velvet dress and had her child's pelisse
of the same material decked with bright steel keys as ornaments instead of
buttons, the police discovered nothing. The woman seemed to have acquired some
of the humor of the famous "Red," and those keys were doubtlessly put on the
child's garment for the edification of the detectives. The watch on Kate was
soon abandoned, for it was not thought possible that she would "make
connection," as the police say, with "Red" in person.
It was known that Kate Leary was keeping Bob Scott's place in South Brooklyn,
and for a time it was thought that "Red" might be there. An effort was made to
"shadow" the house, but it was so exposed that this could not be done. They
noticed several times, late at night, that a man muffled up came out from the
house and entered a sleigh. The walk and general carriage of the man convinced
the watchers that they saw no less a personage than "Red" Leary, but all
efforts to get a look at his face failed. Sufficient evidence, however, was
obtained to convince Detective Robert Pinkerton that the man was Leary, and on
Thursday night he went over with Hiscock and joined the watchers, fully
determined to accost the man should he appear. During all the cold hours of
the night the watch was maintained, and about 3 o'clock patience was rewarded,
for the jingle of sleigh-bells was heard and a sleigh came dashing along from
the direction of Fort Hamilton.
At a signal the detectives concentrated and Pinkerton, jumping into the middle
of the street, grabbed the horse's head, at the same time calling on the man
in the sleigh to throw up his hands or take the consequences. Cornered on all
sides, the man in the sleigh did as he was bid, and Pinkerton recognized the
voice of the man he was looking for when Leary remarked: "It's rather cold
this morning, Bob."
The following day Leary was on his way to Northampton. Six year previous the
Gazette had reported another famous escape from jail, that of William J.
Sharkey:
On Sunday, September 1st, 1872, William J. Sharkey, ward politician and
sporting man, killed Robert S. Dunn in a barroom at 288 Hudson Street. Dunn
had been a professional gambler for fifteen years. Sharkey was the son of
respected residents of the Ninth Ward, but he went astray early in life, and
after a brilliantly notorious career of the crooked sort, bloomed out into a
successful political adventurer. He was a power in the Eighth Ward primaries,
had a club named after him, and belonged to every influential political
organization in the Fifth Congressional District. Sharkey was found guilty of
murder in the first degree, and sentenced to be hanged on August 15th, 1873.
November 19th, 1873, found Sharkey still in the Tombs, an occupant of cell 40,
on the second tier.
At ten o'clock of the morning of that day the murderer was visited by his
mistress, Maggie Jourdan. The girl, who, since her separation from her first
lover, Thomas Murphy, the pickpocket, had been a devoted companion of Sharkey,
had beggared herself in order to provide him with funds for his defense. She
visited him constantly in jail, and her quiet, modest demeanor had made her a
general favorite.. On the day in question she remained in conversation with
him for two hours and a half, when she was joined by her friend, Mrs. Wesley
Allen. At One o'clock Maggie Jourdan left the prison. At half-past one a tall,
ungainly female, heavily veiled, handed a ticket to the doorman and went out.
At two o'clock Mrs. Allen tried to pass out without a ticket, alleging that
she had lost hers. An alarm was sounded, and sharkey was found to have shaved
his mustache off, invested himself in the attire provided by his mistress and
her friend, and escaped. The ungainly female with the thick veil was the
convicted murderer himself. The last trace Sharkey left was on a Bleecker
Street Car. George W. Matsell, superintendent of the police, took vigorous
steps to trace the assassin. All the European steamers were kept under
surveillance. Two thousand dollars reward was offered. The Eighth Ward was
searched with a vigor that left no likely refuge unexplored and people who
were known to have been Sharkey's intimates were closely shadowed. But all in
vain. The flying man had managed to vanish and leave no trail.
Some years later the Gazette revealed that sharkey had escaped on the schooner
Frank Atwood, which also became famous as the means of Tweed's escape to Cuba.
Sharkey was secreted aboard this boat and taken to Haiti. He did not like the
looks of that country and continued on the boat to Cuba. In 1881 the Gazette
wound up a story on the Sharkey career with this paragraph:
During his stay in Cuba the woman to whom he owed life and liberty made a
voyage from New York to see him. He ill-treated her so brutally that the
captain of the steamer which took her down was compelled to rescue her from
his violence. Maggie is living in New York; a year or so ago she married and
her present life is a happier one than her past ever promised to be. Not a bit
happier, as the reader will probably agree, than her heroic devotion to her
miserable lover entitled her to find it.
From her exile in Canada there came by a wearisome and circuitous route to the
city of New York a corpulent matron in her sixties, who, though of a build and
physiognomy that lent itself readily to caricature, had commanded rare
iniquitous power in the very metropolis to which she was now returning in
dread secrecy. This was a truly sad journey she had come these many miles and
was made at the danger of long imprisonment, for it was inspired by the desire
to have a last look upon the still face of the youngest of her four children,
a young girl of exceptional beauty and tender years, who had suddenly died in
the city from which her mother had been forced to decamp in disgraceful
notoriety. The mother dared not even follow the beloved body to the grave. New
York held no haven for this woman and she could do no more than send the
funeral on its way and then hurry off in her bereavement and hoping only to
escape unnoticed back to her enforced home in Toronto. She had fled New York
in the closing month of the year, 1884, just in time to escape the fate of
justice, which had finally trapped her for all of her cunning and power.
Though she looked only the part of a motherly Jewess with whom the years had
dealt rather carelessly, this was none other than Fredericka Mandelbaum,
"Queen of the Fences," and with such genius in her line that though the police
had been aware of the villainy of her business for a quarter of a century, she
had thrived through all these years in an almost open defiance of the law. To
break the criminal connections of this strange woman, her partnership with the
foremost thieves and shoplifters of her time, that could only have prospered
with the connivance of those who should have hunted her down, it was finally
necessary for an earnest District Attorney to openly snub the metropolitan
police department and call in the services and ingenuity of a private
detective agency before the evidence could be gathered that in the end brought
her in contact with the law.
A rare character was this Mother Mandelbaum, or "Marm," as she was better
known. There was nothing of exaggeration in the resume of her activities as
revealed in the story which the Gazette published soon after her trip in
disguise to New York, of which excerpts are here set down for the sake of
brevity.
Fredericka Mandelbaum, born in Germany of Hebrew parents, arrived in this
country with her husband sometime in 1849. Five years later the two opened a
dry-goods and haberdashery store at 79 Clinton Street, corner of Rivington.
This three-story structure, in what was then the heart of the German
residential section and known as Kleine Deutschland, soon became the property
of the Mandelbaums, as did the two-story wing which sprawled at a somewhat odd
angle in the rear. On the shelves of the store was displayed the usual
assortment of goods in keeping with its character and suitable to the needs of
the neighborhood, and the trade in this line was more than an ostensible one.
Passing into the rear building there was a distinct change of atmosphere. It
was mainly given over to lavishly crowded living rooms. Chairs of rare
antiquity and other fine furniture, as well as carpets and drapes of most
expensive character, together with costly silver and glassware and belongings,
made this one of the most expensively appointed homes in the city. Here, it is
understood, she entertained not a few persons high in official circles, and,
on other occasions, the shining lights of the criminal world. In 1874 "Marm"
became a widow, a fact which in no way affected the success of her dealings,
for her husband was a nonentity. She was the brains of this marriage, and in
her heydey she had no peer as a receiver of stolen goods. She was a remarkable
woman in many ways and it was only unfortunate that her efforts did not happen
to be honestly directed. She was adept in business, acute in her acquaintance
with the machinery of the law and its representatives, and uncanny in her
association with the criminal classes.
It is claimed she never left a criminal her creditor and that she became a
veritable "Bureau of Prevention of Conviction." While she drove hard bargains
with the possessors of stolen property, she had a reputation for dealing
honestly with these violators of the law and her adherence to criminal ethics
gained her an absolute confidence among the guilty gentry. She paid at once
and in cash to almost any amount and she even advanced money for contemplated
"jobs." When in trouble with the police the apprehended rogues seldom appealed
to her in vain and many a one had their escape through her financial
assistance, or her ability to clog the wheels of justice. She is supposed to
have paid a yearly retainer of $5,000. to the well-known firm of criminal
lawyers, Howe & Hummel. Whenever her pets got into trouble she provided the
bail and defrayed the expenses of their trial, for which she taxed them
afterwards the amount of these expenditures; so she always had a fine array of
lawbreakers in her debt and service.
Almost everything in the way of silks that was stolen for years went through
her hands. This included the $30,000 worth of goods stolen from H.B. Claflin &
Co., in 1876, by Johnny Irving and Billy Vaite, and the valuable stocks stolen
from James A. Hearn & Son and Messrs. Simpson, Crawford & Simpson. She had
rooms in different parts of the city, in Brooklyn and in adjacent cities where
the stolen goods would be received in bulk and every bolt of silk or article
that came into her possession was expertly examined and all labels and
trade-marks removed or erased. All plunder was minutely gone over for
obliteration of every possible mark of identification. It is estimated that
she handled between $7,000,000 and $10,000,000 worth of stolen goods.
Occasionally she dealt in stolen bonds, but silks were her hobby, and it was a
deal in this specialty that finally got her into trouble from which even she
could not be rescued. Among the thieves with whom she had affiliation were
"Sheeny Mike" Kurtz, Billy Porter, Jimmy Irving, "Shang" Draper, Johnny Dobbs,
Charles Penan, George Leonidas Leslie (whose widow she assisted for years) and
many others almost equally infamous, and such feminine shop-lifters and worse
as Sophie Lyons, Molly Holbrook, Black Lena, French Louise, Little Rosie,
Lizzie Lancie, Polly King and various other customers only too well known to
the police.
After several civil suits that saw "Marm" escape almost redhanded, Peter B.
Olney, the District Attorney, spurred on by a number of prominent merchants,
decided it would be a waste of time to depend upon the cooperation of the
municipal police and he assigned the Pinkerton detective agency to the task of
"getting the goods" on the "Queen of the Fences." After four months of
persistent work, overwhelming evidence was submitted to Justice Murray and
warrants were issued for her arrest. The Pinkertons had detailed special
officers to visit her place in the guise of petty thieves and to gradually
worm their way into her confidence. Finally they caught her with certain
pieces of silk in her possession which could be positively identified as
property that had been stolen. On complaint of George A. Hearn, Jr., of the
firm of James A. Hearn & Son, of Fourteenth Street, the Mandelbaum woman was
lodged in jail and released under heavy bail. By the time, December 4, 1884,
when she was to face trial, such a strong case had been made out against her
that her conviction seemed inevitable. Her flight to Toronto came as no
surprise, though nothing was done to prevent it. There she was in a few days
placed under arrest by the Canadian authorities, and was promptly released
once her legal representative, the wily Abe Hummel, appeared on the ground.
Her fortune, once estimated at over one million dollars, is said to have
shrunk to one-tenth of that amount, and while she is living in comfort and
plenty in the scene of her banishment, she has been heard to say she would
only too gladly sacrifice every penny that is still hers if she could breathe
her declining days in the atmosphere of the Thirteenth Ward where she so long
had her home. The Gazette was fully aware of the fact that she was secretly in
the city for the funeral of her daughter. While it is conceded that her
existence warranted a more extreme punishment than exile, we did not feel it
our duty to intrude on the few hours of sadness that she spent in this city
and we have refrained telling of her presence here until her departure, since
it was immediate once the body of her daughter was on its way to the grave.
Space will not permit details on the ingenious capture of William E. Brockway,
the "King of the Counterfeiters," and the other famous knaves whose deeds and
fates were chronicled within the pages of Mr. Fox's journal, there were
altogether too many of them. It was Brockway who, in 1865, counterfeited a
$100. note that was so perfect and gained so large a circulation the
Government was forced to withdraw the genuine bills from circulation.
Sins of New York
As "Exposed" by the Police Gazette
By Edward Van Every
Publisher: Frederick A. Stokes Company--New York
Copyright: 1930 3 Printings October 15, October 23 and October 30.
Prepared and Transcribed by Miriam Medina
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