_Back to Prison._
I was not recognized by the authorities at Sing Sing as having been
there before. I gave a different name and pedigree, of course, but
the reason I was not known as a second-timer was that I had spent only
nine months at Sing Sing on my first term, the remainder having been
passed at Auburn. There was a new warden at Sing Sing, too, and some
of the other officials had changed; and, besides, I must have been
lucky. Anyway, none of the keepers knew me, and this meant a great
deal to me; for if I had been recognized as a second-timer I should
have had a great deal of extra time to serve. On my first term I had
received commutation time for good behavior amounting to over a year,
and there is a rule that if a released convict is sent back to prison,
he must serve, not only the time given him on his second sentence, but
the commutation time on his first bit. Somebody must have been very
careless, for I beat the State out of more than a year.
Some of the convicts, indeed, knew that I had served before; but they
did not squeal. Even some of those who did not know me had an inkling
of it, but would not tell. It was still another instance of honor among
thieves. If they had reported me to the authorities, they might have
had an easier time in stir and had many privileges, such as better
jobs and better things to eat. There were many stool-pigeons there, of
course, but somehow these rats did not get wind of me.
It did not take me long to get the Underground Tunnel in working order
again, and I received contraband letters, booze, opium and morphine
as regularly as on my first bit. One of the screws running the Tunnel
at the time, Jack R----, was a little heavier in his demands than I
thought fair. He wanted a third instead of a fifth of the money sent
the convicts from home. But he was a good fellow, and always brought
in the hop as soon as it arrived. Like the New York police he was hot
after the stuff, but who can blame him? He wanted to rise in the world,
and was more ambitious than the other screws. I continued my pipe
dreams, and my reading; indeed, they were often connected. I frequently
used to imagine that I was a character in one of the books; and often
choked the detestable Tarquin into insensibility.
On one occasion I dreamed that I was arraigned before my Maker and
charged with murder. I cried with fear and sorrow, for I felt that even
before the just God there was no justice; but a voice silenced me and
said that to be guilty of the crime of murder, it was not necessary
to use weapons or poison. Suddenly I seemed to see the sad faces of
my father and mother, and then I knew what the voice meant. Indeed, I
was guilty. I heard the word, "Begone," and sank into the abyss. After
many thousand years of misery I was led into the Chamber of Contentment
where I saw some of the great men whose books I had read. Voltaire, Tom
Paine and Galileo sat on a throne, but when I approached them with awe,
the angel, who had the face of a keeper, told me to leave. I appealed
to Voltaire, and begged him not to permit them to send me among the
hymn-singers. He said he pitied me, but that I was not fit to be with
the great elect. I asked him where Dr. Parkhurst was, and he answered
that the doctor was hot stuff and had evaporated long ago. I was led
away sorrowing, and awoke in misery and tears, in my dark and damp
cell.
On this bit I was assigned to the clothing department, where I stayed
six months, but did very little work. Warden Sage replaced Warden
Darson and organized the system of stool-pigeons in stir more carefully
than ever before; so it was more difficult than it was before to
neglect our work. I said to Sage one day: "You're a cheap guy. You
ought to be President of a Woman's Sewing Society. You can do nothing
but make an aristocracy of stool-pigeons." I gave up work after six
months because of my health, which had been bad for a long time, but
now grew worse. My rapid life on the outside, my bad habits, and my
experience in prison were beginning to tell on me badly. There was a
general breaking-down of my system. I was so weak and coughed so badly
that they thought I was dying. The doctors said I had consumption and
transferred me to the prison hospital, where I had better air and food
and was far more comfortable in body but terribly low in my mind. I
was so despondent that I did not even "fan my face" (turn my head away
to avoid having the outside world become familiar with my features)
when visitors went through the hospital. This was an unusual degree
of carelessness for a professional gun. One reason I was so gloomy was
that I was now unable to get hold of my darling hop.
I was so despondent in the hospital that I really thought I should soon
become an angel; and my environment was not very cheerful, for several
convicts died on beds near me. Whenever anybody was going to die,
every convict in the prison knew about it, for the attendants would
put three screens around the dying man's bed. There were about twenty
beds in the long room, and near me was an old boyhood pal, Tommy Ward,
in the last stages of consumption. Tommy and I often talked together
about death, and neither of us was afraid of it. I saw a dozen men die
during my experience in state prisons and I never heard one of them
clamor for a clergyman. Tommy was doing life for murder, and ought to
have been afraid of death, if anyone was. But when he was about to die,
he sent word to me to come to his bedside, and after a word or two of
good-bye he went into his agony. The last words he ever said were: "Ah,
give me a big Peter (narcotic)." He did not receive the last rites of
the Catholic Church, and his ignorant family refused to bury him. So
Tommy's cell number was put on the tombstone, if it could be called
such, which marked his grave in the little burying ground outside the
prison walls.
Indeed, it is not easy to throw the religious con (confidence game)
into a convict. Often, while we were in chapel, the dominie would tell
us that life was short; but hardly one of the six or seven hundred
criminals who were listening believed the assertion. They felt that
the few years they were doing for the good of their country were as
long as centuries. If there were a few "cons" who tried the cheerful
dodge, they did not deceive anybody, for their brother guns knew that
they were sore in their hearts because they had been caught without
fall-money, and so had to serve a few million years in stir.
After I got temporarily better in health and had left the hospital,
I began to read Lavater on physiognomy more industriously than ever.
With his help I became a close student of faces, and I learned to tell
the thoughts and emotions of my fellow convicts. I watched them at
work and when their faces flushed I knew they were thinking of Her.
Sometimes I would ask a man how She was, and he would look confused,
and perhaps angry because his day dream was disturbed. And how the
men used to look at women visitors who went through the shops! It was
against the rules to look at the inhabitants of the Upper World who
visited stir, but I noticed that after women visitors had been there
the convicts were generally more cheerful. Even a momentary glimpse of
those who lived within the pale of civilization warmed their hearts.
After the ladies had gone the convicts would talk about them for hours.
Many of their remarks were vulgar and licentious, but some of the men
were broken down with feeling and would say soft things. They would
talk about their mothers and sweethearts and eventually drift back on
their ill-spent lives. How often I thought of the life behind me! Then
I would look at the men about me, some of whom had stolen millions and
had international reputations--but all discouraged now, broken down in
health, penniless and friendless. If a man died in stir he was just a
cadaver for the dissecting table, nothing more. The end fitted in well
with his misspent life. These reflections would bring us around again
to good resolutions.
People who have never broken the law--I beg pardon, who were never
caught--can not understand how a man who has once served in stir will
take another chance and go back and suffer the same tortures. A society
lady I once met said she thought criminals who go on grafting, when
they know what the result will be, must be lacking in imagination. I
replied to her: "Madam, why do you lace tight and indulge in social
dissipation even after you know it is bad for the health? You know it
is a strain on your nerves, but you do it. Is it because you have no
imagination? That which we all dread most--death--we all defy."
The good book says that all men shall earn their bread by the sweat
of their brow, but we grafters make of ourselves an exception, with
that overweening egotism and brash desire to do others with no return,
which is natural to everybody. Only when the round-up comes, either in
the sick bed or in the toils, we often can not bear our burdens and
look around to put the blame on someone else. If a man is religious,
why should he not drop it on Jesus? Man! How despicable at times! How
ungallant to his ancestor of the softer sex! From time immemorial he
has exclaimed: "Only for her, the deceiving one, my better half, I
should be perfect."
Convicts, particularly if they are broken in health, often become
like little children. It is not unusual for them to grow dependent on
dumb pets, which they smuggle into prison by means of the Underground
Tunnel. The man in stir who has a white mouse or robin is envied by
the other convicts, for he has something to love. If an artist could
only witness the affection that is centered on a mouse or dog, if he
could only depict the emotions in the hard face of the criminal, what a
story! I had a white rat, which I had obtained with difficulty through
the Underground. I used to put him up my sleeve, and he would run all
over my body, he was so tame. He would stand on his hind legs or lie
down at my command. Sometimes, when I was lonely and melancholy, I
loved this rat like a human being.
In May, 1896, when I still had about a year to serve on my second
term, a rumor circulated through the prison that some of the Salvation
Army were going to visit the stir. The men were greatly excited at
the prospect of a break in the dreary routine. I imagined that a big
burly Salvationist, beating a drum, with a few very thin Salvation
lasses, would march through the prison yard. I was dumbfounded by the
reality, for I saw enter the Protestant chapel, which was crowded with
eager convicts, two delicate, pretty women. No actor or actress ever
got a warmer welcome than that given to Mrs. Booth and her secretary,
Captain Jennie Hughes. After the clapping of hands and cheering had
ceased, Mrs. Booth arose and made a speech, which was listened to in
deep silence. Certainly she was eloquent, and what she said impressed
many an old gun. She was the first visitor who ever promised practical
Christianity and eventually carried out the promise. She promised to
build homes for us after our release; and in many cases, she did, and
we respect her. She spoke for an hour, and afterwards granted private
interviews, and many of the convicts told her all their troubles, and
she promised to take care of their old mothers, daughters and wives.
Before leaving the chapel, she sang: "O Lord, let the waves of
thy crimson sea roll over me." I did not see how such a pretty,
intelligent, refined and educated woman could say such a bloody thing,
but she probably had forgotten what the words really meant. At any
rate, she is a good woman, for she tried hard to have the Parole Bill
passed. That bill has recently become a law, and it is a good one, in
my opinion; but it has one fault. It only effects first-timers. The
second and third timers, who went to Sing Sing years ago when there was
contract labor and who worked harder than any laborer in New York City,
ought to have a chance, too. Show a little confidence in any man, even
though he be a third-timer, as I have been, and he will be a better man
for it.
After the singing, on that first morning of Mrs. Booth's visit,
she asked those convicts who wanted to lead a better life to stand
up. About seventy men out of the five or six hundred arose, and
the others remained seated. I was not among those who stood up. I
never met anybody who could touch me in that way. I don't believe in
instantaneous Christianity. I knew half a dozen of the men who stood
up, and they were not very strong mentally. I often wondered what the
motives were that moved the men in that manner. Man is a social animal,
and Mrs. Booth was a magnetic woman. After I had heard her speak once,
I knew that. She had a good personal appearance and one other requisite
that appealed strongly to those who were in our predicament--her sex.
Who could entirely resist the pleadings of a pretty woman with large
black eyes?
Certainly I was moved by this sincere and attractive woman, but my
own early religious training had made me suspicious of the whole
business. Whenever anybody tried to reform me through Christianity I
always thought of that powerful Celt who used to rush at me in Sunday
school with a hickory stick and shout "Who made you?" And I don't think
that most of the men who profess religion in prison are sincere. They
usually want to curry favor with the authorities, or get "staked" after
they leave stir. One convict, whom I used to call "The Great American
Identifier," because he used to graft by claiming to be a relative of
everybody that died, from California to Maine and weeping over the dead
body, was the worst hypocrite I ever saw--a regular Uriah Heep. He was
one of Mrs. Booth's converts and stood up in chapel. After she went
away he said to me: "What a blessing has been poured into my soul since
I heard Mrs. Booth." Another hypocrite said to me on the same occasion:
"I don't know what I would do only for Mrs. Booth. She has lightened
my weary burdens." Now, I would not trust either of those men with a
box of matches; and so I said to the Great American Identifier: "You
are the meanest, most despicable thief in the whole stir. I'd respect
you if you had the nerve to rob a live man, but you always stole from
a cadaver." He was horrified at my language and began to talk of a
favorite subject with him--his wealthy relatives.
Some of these converts were not hypocrites, but I don't think even they
received any good from their conversion. Some people go to religion
because they have nothing else to distract their thoughts, and the
subject sometimes is a mania with them. The doctors say that there is
only one incurable mental disease--religious insanity. In the eyes
of the reformers Mrs. Booth does a great thing by making some of us
converts, but experts in mental diseases declare that it is very bad
to excite convicts to such a pitch. Many of the weak-minded among them
lose their balance and become insane through these violent religious
emotions.
I did not meet so many of the big guns on my second term as on my
first; but, of course, I came across many of my old pals and formed
some new acquaintances. It was on this term that four of us used to
have what I called a tenement house oratory talk whenever we worked
together in the halls. Some of us were lucky enough at times to serve
as barbers, hall-men and runners to and from the shops, and we used to
gather together in the halls and amuse ourselves with conversation.
Dickey, Mull, Mickey and I became great pals in this way. Dickey was
a desperate river pirate who would not stand a roast from anybody,
but was well liked. Mull was one of the best principled convicts I
ever knew in my life. He was quiet, delicate and manly, and opposed to
abusing young boys, yet if you did him an injury he would cut the liver
out of you. He was a good fellow. Mickey was what I called a tenement
house philosopher. He'd stick his oar into every bit of talk that was
started. One day the talk began on Tammany Hall and went something like
this:
"All crooked officials," said Mull, "including all of them, ought to be
railroaded to Sing Sing."
_Dickey_: "Through their methods the county offices are rotten from the
judge to the policeman."
_Mull_: "I agree with you."
_Mickey_: "Ah, wat's the matter wid Tammany? My old man never voted any
other ticket. Neither did yours. When you get into stir you act like
college professors. Why don't you practice what you spout? I always
voted the Tammany ticket--five or six times every election day. How is
it I never got a long bit?"
_Mull_: "How many times, Mickey, have you been in stir?"
_Mickey_: "This is the fourth, but the highest I got was four years."
_Dickey_: "You never done anything big enough to get four."
_Mickey_: "I didn't, eh? You have been hollering that you are innocent,
and get twenty years for piracy. I only get four, but I am guilty every
time. There is a big difference between that and twenty, aint it?"
Mull slapped Mickey on the back and said: "Never mind. You will get
yours yet on the installment plan." Then, turning to me, Mull asked:
"Jim, don't you think that if everything was square and on the level
we'd stand a better chance?"
"No," I replied. "In the first place we have not reached the
millennium. In the second place they would devise some legal scheme to
keep a third timer the rest of his natural days. I know a moccasin who
would move heaven and earth to have such a bill passed, and he is one
of the crookedest philanthropists in America to-day. I am a grafter,
and I believe that the present administration is all right. I know that
I can stay out of prison as long as I save my fall-money. When I blow
that in I ought to go to prison. Every gun who is capable of stealing,
knows that if he puts by enough money he can not only keep out of stir
but can beat his way into heaven. I'm arguing as a professional thief."
This was too much for Mickey, who said: "Why don't you talk United
States and not be springing whole leaves out of a dictionary?"
Just then Big Jim came up. He had heard what I said and he joined
in: "You know why I got the tenth of a century? I had thousands in my
pocket and went to buy some silk underwear at a haberdasher's in New
York. But it seemed to me a waste of good coin to buy them, so I stole
a dozen pair of silk stockings. They tried to arrest me, I shot, and
got ten years. I always did despise a petty thief, but I never felt
like kicking him till then. Ten years for a few stockings! Can you
blame the judge? I didn't. Even a judge admires a good thief. If I had
robbed a bank I'd never have got such a long bit. The old saying is
true: Kill one man and you will be hanged. Kill sixteen, and the United
States Government is likely to pension you."
The tenement-house philosopher began to object again, when the guard,
as usual, came along to stop our pleasant conversation. He thought we
were abusing our privileges.
It was during this bit that I met the man with the white teeth, as he
is now known among his friends. I will call him Patsy, and tell his
story, for it is an unusual one. He was a good deal older man than I
and was one of the old-school burglars, and a good one. They were a
systematic lot, and would shoot before they stood the collar; but they
were gentlemanly grafters and never abused anybody. The first thing
Patsy's mob did after entering a house was to round up all the inmates
and put them into one room. There one burglar would stick them up
with a revolver, while the others went through the house. On a fatal
occasion Patsy took the daughter of the house, a young girl of eighteen
or nineteen, in his arms and carried her down stairs into the room
where the rest of the family had been put by the other grafters. As he
carried the girl down stairs, she said: "Mr. Burglar, don't harm me."
Patsy was masked, all but his mouth, and when he said: "You are as safe
as if you were in your father's arms," she saw his teeth, which were
remarkably fine and white. Patsy afterwards said that the girl was not
a bit alarmed, and was such a perfect coquette that she noticed his
good points. The next morning she told the police that one of the bad
men had a beautiful set of teeth. The flymen rounded up half a dozen
grafters on suspicion, among them Patsy; and no sooner did he open his
mouth, than he was recognized, and settled for a long bit. Poor Patsy
has served altogether about nineteen years, but now he has squared
it, and is a waiter in a Bowery saloon, more content with his twelve
dollars a week than he used to be with his thousands. I often go around
and have a glass with him. He is now a quiet, sober fellow, and his
teeth are as fine as ever.
One day a man named "Muir," a mean, sure-thing grafter, came to the
stir on a visit to some of his acquaintances. He had never done a bit
himself, although he was a notorious thief. But he liked to look at the
misfortunes of others, occasionally. On this visit he got more than he
bargained for. He came to the clothing department where Mike, who had
grafted with Muir in New York, and I, were at work. Muir went up to
Mike and offered him a bill. Mike threw it in Muir's face and called
him--well, the worst thing known in Graftdom. "If it wasn't for you,"
he said, "I wouldn't be doing this bit."
There are several kinds of sure-thing grafters. Some are crooked
gamblers, some are plain stool-pigeons, some are discouraged thieves
who continue to graft but take no risks. Muir was one of the meanest
of the rats that I have known, yet in a way, he was handy to the
professional gun. He had somebody "right" at headquarters and could
generally get protection for his mob; but he would always throw the mob
over if it was to his advantage. He and two other house-work men robbed
a senator's home, and such a howl went up that the police offered all
manner of protection to the grafter who would tip them off to who got
the stuff. Grafters who work with the coppers don't want it known among
those of their own kind, for they would be ostracized. If they do a
dirty trick they try to throw it on someone else who would not stoop to
such a thing. Muir was a diplomat, and tipped off the Central Office,
and those who did the trick, all except Tom and Muir, were nailed. A
few nights after that the whisper was passed among guns of both sexes,
who had gathered at a resort up-town, that somebody had squealed. The
muttered curses meant that some Central Office man had by wireless
telegraphy put the under world next that somebody had tipped off the
police. But it was not Muir that the hard names were said against: the
Central Office man took care of that. With low cunning Muir had had the
rumor circulated that it was Tom who had thrown them down, and Tommy
was ostracized.
I knew Muir and I knew Tommy, and I was sure that the latter was
innocent. Some time after Tom had been cut by the rest of the gang I
saw Muir drinking with two Central Office detectives, in a well-known
resort, and I was convinced that he was the rat. His personal
appearance bore out my suspicion. He had a weak face, with no fight in
it. He was quiet of speech, always smiling, and as soft and noiseless
as the animal called the snake. He had a narrow, hanging lip, small
nose, large ears, and characterless, protruding eyes. The squint look
from under the eye-brows, and the quick jerk of the hand to the chin,
showed without doubt that he possessed the low cunning too of that
animal called the rat. Partly through my influence, Muir gradually got
the reputation of being a sure-thing grafter, but he was so sleek that
he could always find some grafter to work with him. Pals with whom he
fell out, always shortly afterwards came to harm. That was the case
with Big Mike, who spat in Muir's face, when the latter visited him in
Sing Sing. When Muir did pickpocket work, he never dipped himself, but
acted as a stall. This was another sure-thing dodge. Muir never did a
bit in stir because he was of more value to headquarters than a dozen
detectives. The fact that he never did time was another thing that
gradually made the gang suspicious of him. Therefore, at the present
time he is of comparatively little value to the police force, and may
be settled before long. I hope so.
One of the meanest things Muir ever did was to a poor old "dago"
grafter, a queer-maker (counterfeiter). The Italian was putting
out unusually good stuff, both paper and metal, and the avaricious
Muir thought he saw a good chance to get a big bit of money from
the dago. He put up a plan with two Central Office men to bleed the
counterfeiter. Then he went to the dago and said he had got hold of
some big buyers from the West who would buy five thousand dollars worth
of the "queer." They met the supposed buyers, who were in reality
the two Central Office men, at a little saloon. After a talk the
detectives came out in their true colors, showed their shields, and
demanded one thousand dollars. The dago looked at Muir, who gave him
the tip to pay the one thousand dollars. The Italian, however, thinking
Muir was on the level, misunderstood the sign, and did not pay. The
outraged detectives took the Italian to police headquarters, but did
not show up the queer at first; they still wanted their one thousand
dollars. So the dago was remanded and remanded, getting a hearing every
twenty-four hours, but there was never enough evidence. Finally the
poor fellow got a lawyer, and then the Central Office men gave up the
game, and produced the queer as evidence. The United States authorities
prosecuted the case, and the Italian was given three years and a half.
After he was released he met Muir on the East Side, and tried to kill
him with a knife. That is the only way Muir will ever get his deserts.
A man like him very seldom dies in state's prison, or is buried in
potter's field. He often becomes a gin-mill keeper and captain of his
election district, for he understands how to control the repeaters who
give Tammany Hall such large majorities on election day in Manhattan.
It was on this second bit in prison, as I have said in another place,
that the famous "fence" operated in stir. I knew him well. He was a
clever fellow, and I often congratulated him on his success with the
keepers; for he was no stool-pigeon and got his pull legitimately. He
was an older grafter than I and remembered well Madame Mandelbaum, the
Jewess, one of the best fences, before my time, in New York City. At
the corner of Clinton and Rivington Streets there stood until a few
years ago a small dry goods and notions store, which was the scene of
transactions which many an old gun likes to talk about. What plannings
of great robberies took place there, in Madame Mandelbaum's store!
She would buy any kind of stolen property, from an ostrich feather
to hundreds and thousands of dollars' worth of gems. The common
shop-lifter and the great cracksman alike did business at this famous
place. Some of the noted grafters who patronized her store were Jimmy
Hope, Shang Draper, Billy Porter, Sheenie Mike, Red Leary, Johnnie
Irving, Jack Walsh, alias John the Mick, and a brainy planner of big
jobs, English George.
Madame Mandelbaum had two country residences in Brooklyn where she
invited her friends, the most famous thieves in two continents. English
George, who used to send money to his son, who was being educated in
England, was a frequent visitor, and used to deposit with her all
his valuables. She had two beautiful daughters, one of whom became
infatuated with George, who did not return her love. Later, she and
her daughters, after they became wealthy, tried to rise in the world
and shake their old companions. The daughters were finely dressed and
well-educated, and the Madame hunted around for respectable husbands
for them. Once a bright reporter wrote a play, in which the central
character was Madame Mandelbaum. She read about it in the newspapers
and went, with her two daughters, to see it. They occupied a private
box, and were gorgeously dressed. The old lady was very indignant when
she saw the woman who was supposed to be herself appear on the stage.
The actress, badly dressed, and made up with a hooked nose, was jeered
by the audience. After the play, Madame Mandelbaum insisted on seeing
the manager of the theatre. She showed him her silks and her costly
diamonds and then said: "Look at me. I am Madame Mandelbaum. Does that
huzzy look anything like me?" Pointing to her daughters she continued:
"What must my children think of such an impersonation? Both of them are
better dressed and have more money and education than that strut, who
is only a moment's plaything for bankers and brokers!"
In most ways, of course, my life in prison during the second term was
similar to what it was on my first term. Books and opium were my main
pleasures. If it had not been for them and for the thoughts about life
and about my fellow convicts which they led me to form, the monotony
of the prison routine would have driven me mad. My health was by that
time badly shattered. I was very nervous and could seldom sleep without
a drug.
My moral health was far worse, too, than it had been on my first term.
Then I had made strong efforts to overcome the opium habit, and laid
plans to give up grafting. Then I had some decent ambitions, and did
not look upon myself as a confirmed criminal; whereas on the second
term, I had grown to take a hopeless view of my case. I began to feel
that I could not reform, no matter how hard I tried. It seemed to
me, too, that it was hardly worth while now to make an effort, for I
thought my health was worse than it really was and that I should die
soon, with no opportunity to live the intelligent life I had learned to
admire through my books. I still made good resolutions, and some effort
to quit the hop, but they were weak in comparison with the efforts
I had made during my first term. More and more it seemed to me that
I belonged in the under world for good, and that I might as well go
through it to the end. Stealing was my profession. It was all I knew
how to do, and I didn't believe that anybody was interested enough in
me to teach me anything else. On the other hand, what I had learned on
the Rocky Path would never leave me. I was sure of my knowledge of the
technique of graft, and I knew that a sucker was born every minute.