Young Offenders--Thirty Years ago--A large Haul--A Ray of Light.
The facts of the following case were furnished me by a gentleman
connected with the New York post-office. I will introduce him as the
relator of his own story, taking some liberty, however, with the
phraseology.
It is one of the too numerous class of cases, of which mere boys are
the heroes, (if the term may thus be perverted,)--a class that is
represented in this work, which would otherwise be incomplete,
professing, as it does, to illustrate the various phases of
post-office life, as respects persons of different ages and
conditions. The present narration will show that our own times are not
the only period fertile in juvenile rascality, but that the youth of
thirty years ago were too frequently set upon evil.
At the time when the incidents occurred which I am about to narrate,
(viz. in the year 1826,) it was the usual practice in the New York
office to make up the morning's mails on the preceding evening, and to
place them upon tables before they were entered on the "transcripts,"
(sheets or books in which copies of the post-bills are made,) and
enclosed in wrappers. At this time a boy twelve or thirteen years of
age was employed as assistant to one of the letter carriers, and
generally arrived at the office at an earlier hour in the morning than
the regular clerks. The nature of his duties made him well acquainted
with the different species of letters, so that he could determine
without much difficulty, from its general appearance, whether a letter
contained hidden treasures or not.
So, by way of beguiling the time before the arrival of the clerks, or
for the sake of a little improving practice, he one morning looked
over the Eastern mail, which lay spread before him, and selected a
letter addressed by the Cashier of the Farmers' and Mechanics' Bank of
New York, to the Cashier of one of the banks in Boston, containing
four thousand dollars in bank-notes of one thousand dollars each.
On the discovery of this "pile," the boy lost no time in "removing the
deposits" to his own pocket, substituting for the bank-notes four
pieces of paper of an equal size, cut from wrappers lying on the
floor. He then resealed the letter and replaced it. The letter was
forwarded by due course of mail, and when it was received at the bank,
the Cashier discovered to his dismay that the money by some jugglery
had been converted into brown paper; and the evident marks of breaking
open and resealing, indicated unequivocally that some human agency had
been engaged in working the spell.
Information of the loss was immediately conveyed to the New York
office, much to the consternation and grief of all concerned, for this
office had been considered a model one, and the clerks had taken pride
in sustaining its character, to say nothing of their own; and now that
suspicion was thrown among them by this daring act of dishonesty,
which, from appearances, must have been committed by some one having
access to the mails, they felt that all confidence in one another, as
well as the confidence of community in them, would be greatly
weakened, until the author of the deed should be discovered. It was
suggested, indeed, that the robbery might have been committed in the
Boston office, but circumstances rather favored the supposition that
the guilt rested with New York.
The Post-Office Department at Washington was apprised of the facts in
the case, and the attempts made to investigate the matter elicited a
good deal of correspondence, which, however, produced no successful
result.
Among other expedients, intimations were thrown out that a thorough
search should be made of the residences and persons of the clerks,
although it was not likely that the thief, whoever he might be, was so
green as to keep the money for such a length of time, in any place
where its discovery would be positive proof against him; and if the
search were unavailing, the only result would be the infliction of
mortification upon those who were innocent of the crime.
At this juncture, a ray of light appeared. It was then as well as now
the practice of the assorting clerks to place the letters "mis-sent"
and "overcharged," in a box by themselves, and one morning a letter of
this description was mis-sent to this office, directed to Jamaica, L.
I., which was accordingly placed in this box. On our return from
breakfast this letter was found to be missing. As the boy before
mentioned was the only occupant of the office during our absence, the
disappearance of the letter naturally induced the belief that he had
taken it. This second instance of delinquency assumed a double
importance from the fact that the purloiner of this and the robber of
the Boston letter, were in all probability one and the same person.
Every exertion was therefore made to bring the truth to light.
One of the clerks was dispatched to Jamaica to ascertain whether the
letter might not have been somehow received at that office, but his
proposed investigations were prevented by the unofficial behavior of
his horse, which, unmindful of the important business in hand, ran
away, upset the carriage, and spilt out its contents. The clerk was so
much injured as to be unable to proceed, and therefore returned
without the desired information.
On the next morning, while the "drop letters" were being assorted,
this letter was found among them and was identified. It had been
broken open, examined, resealed, but not robbed of a draft for a large
amount which it contained. Near the seal were written with a pencil
the words "Picked up in Vesey Street."
The hand-writing was believed to be that of the suspected boy, and he
was immediately charged with taking and breaking open the letter,
which accusation he stoutly denied, but when he was assured that we
knew his hand, that the words which he had written on the letter
showed conclusively that he knew something of its whereabouts during
its absence, and that it was our determination to investigate the
matter thoroughly, his courage gave way, and he confessed opening the
letter, but said he did not meddle with the draft which it contained,
as he could make no use of it.
Having thus applied an entering wedge, I lost no time in turning to
account the information already obtained, which I hoped would lead to
the detection of the person who robbed the Boston letter. Indeed, I
was entirely unprepared to admit the existence of two such rascals in
the New York office, as such repeated instances of delinquency would
imply, and was quite positive that the boy before me was the only
culprit. I accordingly said to him, "Now, Samuel, I am glad for your
sake that you have confessed your guilt in relation to this letter,
and I hope you will be equally frank if you have been doing anything
else of a similar nature. I strongly suspect that you robbed the
Boston letter that we had so much trouble about, and if you did, the
best thing you can do will be to confess it."
"No, sir," replied he, "I don't know any more about this Boston letter
than you do, and I haven't touched any letter but the Jamaica one."
"It is useless," said I, "for you to make such assertions, in the face
of the probabilities in the case. You have confessed that you stole
one letter, and that renders it the more likely that you have robbed
the other."
"Perhaps it is likely," returned he, "but I didn't do it."
"Well," said I, "take your choice. If you persist in your denial, you
must meet the consequences, and you know that this kind of offence is
punished severely; but if you will own up, I will engage that you
shall get off as easily as possible."
By such considerations I finally induced him to acknowledge his guilt
in relation to the Boston letter, and on being questioned further, he
stated that he still had the bills, and offered to show me the place
where they were concealed. I at once started off, accompanied by him
as my guide. We took a course which soon led us out of the city, and
along the banks of the East River.
The day was rainy, and a mist overhung the river and the land. As we
plodded along through the mud and wet, the face of my young companion
was shaded with a sadness which indicated that the external world
harmonized in its gloom with the little world within.
For myself, I must acknowledge that the prospect of reestablishing
lost confidence among my fellow-employés in the post-office, and of
putting an end to the suspicion which had haunted almost every one, as
well as restoring the stolen property to its rightful owner, produced
in me an exhilaration of spirits strangely at variance with all that
met my eye. But as we continued to go on and on, with no signs of
approaching our place of destination, I began to query with myself,
whether my companion might not contemplate giving me the slip, after
leading me a wild-goose chase. I could not see, indeed, what motive he
could have for such a proceeding, unless he wished to vent his malice
on me as one who had been prominent in detecting his misdeeds.
But he kept on steadily, till, after going half a mile or so beyond
the old Penitentiary, (a distance of about three miles from the
post-office,) he turned from the road and stopped before an old wooden
house, apparently uninhabited. The exterior showed signs of many
years' conflict with the elements, in which it had been decidedly
worsted. Moss had gathered upon the shingles, and the paint, of which
there was here and there a trace, strengthened by a feeble contrast
the dark color of the parts from which it had been entirely washed
away. Some of the windows were destitute of glass, and probably
served as a mark for the "slings and arrows" of passing boys.
We entered the building, whose damp and musty-smelling air chilled me,
heated as I was with my long and fatiguing walk, and ascending a
flight of stairs, the boy unlocked the door of a room into which I
passed by his request. The room contained no furniture but half a
dozen chairs, a table, and an old bureau. This last he approached,
unlocked, and taking out entirely one of the drawers, he showed
another smaller one, which was behind the first when that was in
place. Opening this, my eyes were refreshed with a sight of the four
bills, of which I immediately took possession, and thinking it well to
see what further discoveries I could make in this _terra incognita_, I
found a little drawer, concealed like the first one behind another,
and containing two or three hundred dollars in bills, which the
precocious youth confessed to having purloined at different times from
dead letters, which were usually _laid out_ upon tables while the
clerks were making up the dead letter account. It would seem that the
boy thought no more of robbing a dead letter, than do the
camp-followers of plundering dead men after a battle.
After examining the bureau as thoroughly as I was able, and finding no
more of the ill-gotten wealth, I asked my companion whether he had any
more money that did not belong to him, to which inquiry he returned a
negative answer.
The place of concealment was certainly well chosen, for the old house
would be the last place to which any one would think of going, who was
in search for anything valuable. It seemed to me that it was a
particularly fortunate circumstance that the discovery was made at
this time, for he informed me that he had been accumulating the money
found in the bureau with the intention of intrusting it to his uncle,
for the purpose of purchasing some property in Newburgh. This would
have been a rather large operation for a youth of his age! an
operation even worthy of some specimens of Young America at the
present day.
It seemed remarkable to me, as it doubtless has to the reader, that
the boy should have such a remote and strange hiding-place. I
afterwards learned that the house, the back part of which was occupied
by a small family, belonged to an acquaintance of his, and that he
used the room as a place of rendezvous, with some of his companions,
and, as we have seen, as a receptacle for stolen money.
Having accomplished the object of my expedition, I returned light of
heart, though heavy of limb, and communicated the facts as soon as
possible to the Cashier of the Farmers' and Mechanics' Bank, and to
the post master. The lad was at once arrested, tried, and found
guilty, but in consideration of his youth, and his apparent ignorance
of the extent of his crime, and the recovery of the property, he was
sent to the House of Refuge for three years.
The boy's reformation was permanent, as I have been informed by one
who afterwards knew him, when he had removed to a distant place, and
established a good character. If this was so, (which there is no
reason to doubt,) it furnishes an instance of the salutary effects
arising from early detection in a course of crime, especially to those
who are not yet hardened in iniquity. The whole case, also, shows the
danger of allowing boys, with principles hardly established as yet,
and destitute of that firmness which habit and perseverance bestow, to
occupy responsible stations in large offices, where the apparent
facility for the commission of crime and the temptations offered, too
often subvert the honesty which has not yet ripened into a second
nature.