DANGER!
_A TRUE HISTORY OF A GREAT CITY'S_
WILES AND TEMPTATIONS
_THE VEIL LIFTED, AND LIGHT THROWN ON_
CRIME AND ITS CAUSES,
_AND_
CRIMINALS AND THEIR HAUNTS.
_FACTS AND DISCLOSURES_
BY
HOWE & HUMMEL.
BUFFALO:
THE COURIER COMPANY, PRINTERS.
1886
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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 especially applicable to the subject matter of the following pages,
in which the crimes of a great city are dissected and exposed from the
arcanum or confessional of what we may be pardoned for designating the
best-known criminal law offices in America.
So much for the title. A few words as to the _motif_ of the publication.
Despite the efficiency of our police and the activity of our many
admirable reforming and reclaiming systems, crime still abounds, while
the great tide of social impurity continues to roll on with unabated
velocity. Optimists and philanthropic dreamers in every age have
pictured in glowing colors the gradual but sure approach of the
millennium, yet we are, apparently, still as far from that elysium of
purity and unselfishness as ever. Whenever the wolf and the lamb lie
down together, the innocent bleater is invariably inside the other's
ravenous maw. There may be--and we have reason to know that there is--a
marked diminution in certain forms of crime, but there are others in
which surprising fertility of resource and ingenuity of method but too
plainly evince that the latest developments of science and skill are
being successfully pressed into the service of the modern criminal.
Increase of education and scientific skill not only confers superior
facilities for the successful perpetration of crime, but also for its
concealment. The revelations of the newspapers, from week to week, but
too plainly indicate an undercurrent of vice and iniquity, whose depth
and foulness defy all computation.
We are not in accord with those pessimists who speak of New York as a
boiling caldron of crime, without any redeeming features or hopeful
elements. But our practice in the courts and our association with
criminals of every kind, and the knowledge consequently gained of their
history and antecedents, have demonstrated that, in a great city like
New York, the germs of evil in human life are developed into the rankest
maturity. As the eloquent Dr. Guthrie, in his great work, "The City, its
Sins and its Sorrows," remarks: "Great cities many have found to be
great curses. It had been well for many an honest lad and unsuspecting
country girl that hopes of higher wages and opportunities of fortune,
that the gay attire and gilded story of some acquaintance, had never
turned their steps cityward, nor turned them from the simplicity and
safety of their country home. Many a foot that once lightly pressed the
heather or brushed the dewy grass has wearily trodden in darkness, guilt
and remorse, on these city pavements. Happy had it been for many had
they never exchanged the starry skies for the lamps of the town, nor had
left their quiet villages for the throng and roar of the big city's
streets. Weil for them had they heard no roar but the river's, whose
winter flood it had been safer to breast; no roar but ocean's, whose
stormiest waves it had been safer to ride, than encounter the flood of
city temptations, which has wrecked their virtue and swept them into
ruin."
By hoisting the DANGER signal at the mast-head, as it were, we have
attempted to warn young men and young women--the future fathers and
mothers of America--against the snares and pitfalls of the crime and the
vice that await the unwary in New York. Our own long and extensive
practice at the bar has furnished most of the facts; some, again, are on
file in our criminal courts of record; and some, as has already been
hinted, have been derived from the confidential revelations of our
private office. With the desire that this book shall prove a useful
warning and potent monitor to those for whose benefit and instruction it
has been designed, and in the earnest hope that, by its influence, some
few may be saved from prison, penitentiary, lunatic asylum, or suicides'
purgatory, it is now submitted to the intelligent readers of America,
By the public's obedient servants,
HOWE & HUMMEL.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
Ancient and Modern Prisons--Some of the City's Ancient Prisons--How
Malefactors were Formerly Housed--Ancient Bridewells and Modern Jails,
CHAPTER II.
Criminals and their Haunts--The Past and Present Gangs of the City--How
and Where they Herd--Prominent Characters that have passed into
History,
CHAPTER III.
Street Arabs of Both Sexes--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,
CHAPTER IV.
Store Girls--Their Fascinations, Foibles and Temptations,
CHAPTER V.
The Pretty Waiter Girl--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,
CHAPTER VI.
Shoplifters--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,
CHAPTER VII.
Kleptomania--Extraordinary Revelations--A Wealthy Kleptomaniac in the
Toils of a Black-mailing Detective,
CHAPTER VIII.
Panel Houses and Panel Thieves--The Inmates--The Victims--The
Gains--Complete Exposure of the Manner of Operation, and how
Unsuspecting Persons are Robbed,
CHAPTER IX.
A Theatrical Romance--Kate Fisher, the Famous Mazeppa, involved--Manager
Hemmings charged by Fast paced Mrs. Bethune with Larceny,
CHAPTER X.
A Mariner's Wooing--Captain Hazard's Gushing Letters--Breakers on a
Matrimonial Lee Shore--He is Grounded on Divorce Shoals,
CHAPTER XI.
The Baron and "Baroness"--The Romance of Baron Henry Arnous de Reviere,
and "The Buckeye Baroness," Helene Stille,
CHAPTER XII.
The Demi-monde,
CHAPTER XIII.
Passion's Slaves and Victims--A Matter of Untold History--The Terrible
Machinery of the Law as a Means of Persecution--Edwin James's Rascality,
CHAPTER XIV.
Procuresses and their Victims--Clandestine Meetings at Seemingly
Respectable Resorts--The "Introduction House,"
CHAPTER XV.
Quacks and Quackery--Specimen Advertisements--The Bait Held Out, and the
Fish who are Expected to Bite,
CHAPTER XVI.
Abortion and the Abortionists--The Career of Madame
Restell--Rosenzweig's Good Luck,
CHAPTER XVII.
Divorce--The Chicanery of Divorce Specialists--How Divorce Laws Vary in
Certain Slates--Sweeping Amendments Necessary--Illustrative Cases,
CHAPTER XVIII.
Black-mail--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,
CHAPTER XIX.
About Detectives--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,
CHAPTER XX.
Gambling and Gamblers--The Delusions 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,
CHAPTER XXI.
Gambling made Easy--The Last Ingenious Scheme to Fool the
Police--Flat-houses Turned into Gambling Houses--"Stud-horse Poker" and
"Hide the Heart,"
CHAPTER XXII.
Slumming--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,
CHAPTER XXIII.
Our Waste Basket--Contemporaneous Records and Memoranda of Interesting
Cases,
Miss Ruff's Tribulations,
Astounding Degradation,
Fall of a Youthful, Beautiful and Accomplished Wife,
A French Beauty's Troubles,
Life on the Boston Boats,
An Eighty-year-old "Fence,"
Shoppers' Perils,
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
July, 1828. My father was the Rev. Samuel Howe, M. A., a rather
well-known and popular Episcopal clergyman at the Hub in those days. Our
family removed to England when I was yet very young, and consequently my
earliest recollections are of London. I remember going to school, where
I speedily developed a genius for mischief and for getting into scrapes.
I received a liberal allowance of the floggings then fashionable, and I
can recall the _hwhish_ of the implement of torture to this day. We are
all young but once, and when memory calls up the lively pitched battles,
and the pummelings I got and gave at school, I am young again--only my
waist is a good deal more expansive, my step is not so elastic or my
sight so clear. I could recall the names of some of those boys with whom
I fought in those happy school days, and tell how one now adorns the
British bench, how another holds a cabinet portfolio, how another fell
bravely fighting in Africa, and how several, striving neither for name
or fame,
"Along the cool, sequestered vale of life
Pursue the noiseless tenor of their way";
but it would be useless, as would also my experiences at church,
listening to my good father's sermons, and falling constantly asleep.
My youthful reminiscences of events which happened, and of which I heard
or read in my youth, are mostly chaotic and incongruous; but it is
otherwise with the murders. I remember with what thrilling interest I
read the story of Greenacre, who cut up the body of his victim, carrying
the head wrapped up in a handkerchief, on his knees in the omnibus, and
who was supposed to have nearly fainted with fright when, on asking the
conductor the fare, received the answer, "Sixpence a _head!_" Then there
was the horrible Daniel Good, the coachman at Roehampton, and the
monster Courvoisier, the Swiss valet, who murdered his master, Lord
William Russell. These atrocities and the trials at Old Bailey, no
doubt, gave my mind the bent for the criminal law, not that I was in any
sense conscious of the possession of superior powers. It was merely the
selective tendency of a fresh and buoyant mind, rather vigorous than
contemplative, and in which the desire for a special field of action is
but the symptom of health.
At the age of twenty, I entered King's College, London, with the son of
the great American statesman and historian, Edward Everett, and
succeeded in graduating with some distinction. Soon after, I entered the
office of Mr. George Waugh, a noted barrister. 1 had the good fortune to
meet the commendation of Mr. Waugh, and I was consequently placed at the
head of his corps of assistants, and frequently appeared in the English
courts in place of my employer. My connection with this office lasted
about eight years, and then, in pursuance of an intention long prior
formed and never relinquished, I returned to the country of my birth. My
earliest essays at the American bar have been fairly and impartially
told by another pen, and, as the autobiographical form of narrative has
its limitations as well as its advantages, the reader will pardon me if
in this place I drop the "ego" and quote:
"On arriving here, Mr. Howe entered the office of E. H. Seeley, Esq.,
one of our oldest legal practitioners. Here he remained one year,
studying American law and practice with persistent assiduity, and
frequently appearing in our courts, 'by grace,' until he was fully
licensed. And it may be here stated that out of a list of over one
hundred candidates for admission to the bar only eighteen passed, and in
that number was included the young lawyer from London.
"His first case of importance in this city was one of extreme delicacy,
being a test question as to whether Col. Walter W. Price, a wealthy
brewer, was entitled to the position of Colonel of the First Cavalry
Regiment, N. G. S. N. Y., he having received the _second_ highest number
of votes. Mr. Howe took the ground that his client was entitled to the
office, being a resident of this city, while his competitor, Smith, the
founder of the great umbrella house, who had received the largest number
of ballots, resided in Brooklyn. This question was argued before the
Brigade Court, and, its decision being adverse, Mr. Howe carried the
case to the Court of Appeals, where a favorable decision was rendered,
and Mr. Price duly installed in the position. This was the young
lawyer's first technical victory of note, and it brought him almost at
once into considerable prominence.
"He soon after opened an office at the corner of Chambers and Centre
streets, devoted his entire time and energy to civil matters, was highly
successful, and soon achieved a considerable share of popularity. In
1859, finding himself crowded with business, he removed to his present
large suite of offices on the corner of Centre and Leonard streets,
which had formerly been occupied by the late Judge Russell, and from
that time down to the present he has made criminal matters a specialty.
"Mr. Howe's first appearance in the New York courts as a criminal lawyer
was in 1859. A man, by the name of Devine, had been tried and convicted
in the Court of Special Sessions on a charge of larceny. He took
Devine's case to the General Term of the Supreme Court, contending that
the conviction was illegal, inasmuch as the statute provides that
_three_ justices should sit, whereas at the trial of Devine but _two_
had attended. Many members of the bar laughed at him, declaring his
position untenable. In this he was opposed by Assistant District
Attorney, the present Chief Justice, Sedgwick. The Court decided the
point well taken and ordered the discharge of the prisoner, Devine.
"In defending a German named Jacob Weiler, indicted for the murder of
his wife, by shooting, in 1862, Mr. Howe took the ground that the
deceased shot herself, a discharged pistol being found by her side. This
case was very thoroughly canvassed by the entire press of the city, and
occasioned the greatest excitement among the German population. The
trial lasted eight days, and resulted in a disagreement of the jury. At
this stage of the proceedings, owing to a misunderstanding (which it
would hardly be in good taste to explain at this late day), Mr. Howe
withdrew from the defense. Other counsel were substituted, when the case
was re-tried, and the prisoner was convicted and sentenced to state
prison for life.
"Mr. Howe has tried more capital cases than any six lawyers in America
combined. There has not been a murder case of note for the past
twenty-five years in which he has not appeared as counsel. The records
of the Courts of Oyer and Terminer and General Sessions show that he has
tried more than three hundred homicide cases since the year 1860. Mr.
Howe, as a specialist in diseases of the brain, is regarded by
physicians as the peer of the most eminent alienists in practice."
The circumstances under which Mr. A. H. Hummel became associated with
me, first as an office boy, in 1863, at a salary of two dollars per
week, and subsequently, in May, 1869, as my partner, have been told more
than once in the public press. Mr. Hummel was born in Boston, July 27,
1849; came, with his parents, to this city at an early age; attended
Public School No. 15, on East Fifth street, and made my acquaintance on
a January morning before he was fourteen years old. I have at hand a
newspaper clipping, taken from the Rochester, N. Y., _Democrat and
Chronicle_ of March 25, 1877, in which is printed an elaborate notice of
the law firm of Howe & Hummel, in which the junior partner is thus
characterized:
"Soon after Mr. Howe opened his office, a bright lad, conversant with
foreign languages, applied on a cold January morning, in the year 1863,
for employment, and was accepted. His duties as office boy were to
answer questions, make fires, do errands, and do copying
andtranslations. Such was his winning address, his ready tact, his quick
perceptions, his prudence and discretion, that he not only performed his
duties to perfection but, in his few spare moments, learned law. While
he grew but little in stature, he made great progress in his chosen
profession. As he had fluent command of the German language--a useful
adjunct to the practice of a criminal lawyer in New York--and gave
promise of attaining a high rank as an advocate, Mr. Howe made him his
partner before he was admitted to the bar. To-day, in stature, he is
probably the smallest professional man in America; but size is not 'the
standard of the man,' and if Abe's stature were in proportion to his
merit he would be a veritable giant indeed."
With this sentiment I most cordially coincide, and at the same time
bring these somewhat rambling and discursive reminiscences to an end.
WILLIAM F. HOWE.
DANGER!
CHAPTER I.
ANCIENT AND MODERN PRISONS.
_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 not, probably, number more than a few
thousands; but, nevertheless, we find from these same records that, even
in that small community, criminals were so numerous and crime so rife
that a jail or Bridewell had already been established for the
safe-keeping and punishment of evildoers, and a system of citizen-police
inaugurated for the preservation of the local peace.
It was not, however, until some years later, 1642, that the "Staat Huys"
was built, a municipal building, with a portion of it erected especially
for the housing of dangerous criminals. Thus it would seem that for
upwards of two centuries crime and criminals have had their haunts in
this city, and, it is safe to say, while the more ancient cities of
Europe have, unquestionably, originated more felons of every grade,
there are few places that can rival New York in the number of actual
crimes committed during its comparatively brief existence on the earth's
map.
During the earlier history of the embryo city, the nature of the
offenses perpetrated on the then small community, and the type of men
who boldly executed the crimes, were undoubtedly of the same pattern as
those which obtain among us to-day, but with this difference, that with
the onward march of Improvement, hand-in-hand with the progress of
Science and Civilization, have also grimly stalked fashionably-clothed
and modernly-equipped Crime and the scientifically-perfected
law-breaker, with his modern and improved methods. Man's villainies,
like his other passions, remain the same to-day as when the murderous
club of Cain crushed the skull of his brother Abel, and the maiden earth
was crimsoned with the first blood that appealed for vengeance. They
differ only in the manner of commission, and the commission would appear
to be assisted by modern invention and appliances.
To expect large civilized communities dwelling together to be free from
crime would be to imagine an elysium on earth, for where poverty exists
crime will assuredly be found, and poverty will never be divorced from
civilization. It would also appear that, in accordance with the growth
and expansion of the young city in other respects, vice and crime kept
pace, while youthful depravity early began to trouble the good people
then as it worries the same class of persons to-day, for in 1824 we find
that a House of Refuge, for the reformation of juvenile delinquents, was
built, ostensibly superseding the old "Society for the Prevention of
Pauperism." To follow in detail the history of crime in this city, from
so early a date, would be of very little service here, but a simple
chronicle, referring to the periods at which prisons were found to be
necessary, may be briefly touched upon as tending to show how crime
increased and criminals multiplied, as the city grew in wealth and
population.
The new "Staat Huys," before alluded to, was erected on the corner of
Pearl street and Coenties Slip, a locality then considered the most
central in the infant town, and as offering the best facilities for
securely keeping prisoners. It served its double purposes of jail and
city hall until 1698, when it was decided by the authorities to build
another--a larger and more commodious structure; while, in the meantime,
the old military block-house in the immediate neighborhood of the
Governor's residence was conscripted and made use of, additionally to
the "Staat Huys," for the accommodation of the constantly-increasing
number of culprits.
The new building--City Hall--was erected on Broad street, on the ground
now covered by the sub-treasury building, and was finished in 1699, but
was not used as a jail until five years subsequent. In the winter of
1704 the sheriff was required to have the city jail prepared for the
reception of felons. Crime, however, would appear to have become a
monster of terrible mien in those days, far exceeding all the efforts of
the authorities to restrict or even to limit the number of malefactors,
aside from the apparent impossibility of diminishing them, for again, in
1758, another new jail was found absolutely necessary to the needs of
the inhabitants, and was erected on what was then known as "The Fields,"
now City Hall Park, and where, tradition has it, the prisoners were most
barbarously treated. This new place of confinement, together with those
previously in use, served their purpose very well until 1775, when the
new Bridewell was erected, when all were converted into military prisons
during the occupancy of the city by the British. The frightful cruelties
that were then practiced upon the patriot soldiers, unfortunate enough
to be inmates of those prisons, are too familiar to every one to need
mention here.
Shortly after the Revolution, the Penitentiary was established at
Bellevue. In 1816, a portion of the almshouse was set apart for the
punishment of felons, by the institution of the treadmill. This was on
Twenty-sixth street, near First avenue, the present site of Bellevue
Hospital, and its part occupancy as a prison somewhat relieved the
overcrowded condition of the jail. The city jail still continued in City
Hall Park, and was used as a debtors' prison, remaining so until 1832,
when it was entirely converted into the Register's Office, the present
Hall of Records, and is such to this day. It stands opposite the _Staats
Zeitung_ building in old Tryon Row.
The Penitentiary was soon found to be too small for the keeping of the
greatly-increased number of prisoners, and so, in 1836, the buildings on
Blackwell's Island were constructed, and two years later, again, the
Tombs, the sombre, miasmatic, Egyptian edifice on Centre street, was
completed; which latter had been in course of construction for some
years.
In addition to the prisons previously alluded to, there was begun, in
1796, a state prison, which was erected in the Village of Greenwich,
about West Tenth street, near the North River, and which is still in
existence to-day (1886), being occupied by, and known as, the Empire
Brewery. It was used as a state prison until the completion of the
present extensive buildings at Sing Sing, on the Hudson.
Such is, briefly, a history of the establishment of the prisons of this
city, but of the unfortunate class of criminals that have, from time to
time, occupied them, much remains to be said, and will be found in the
succeeding pages.