_Out of Hell._
I left Dannemora asylum for the criminal insane on a cold winter
morning. I had my tickets to New York, but not a cent of money.
Relatives or friends are supposed to provide that. I was happy,
however, and I made a resolution, which this time I shall keep, never
to go to stir or the pipe house again. I knew very well that I could
never repeat such an experience without going mad in reality; or dying.
The first term I spent in stir I had my books and a new life of beauty
and thought to think about. Once for all I had had that experience. The
thought of going through prison routine again--the damp cells, the poor
food, the habits contracted, with the mad-house at the end--no, that
could never be for me again. I felt this, as I heard the loons yelling
good-bye to me from the windows. I looked at the gloomy building
and said to myself: "I have left Hell, and I'll shovel coal before I
go back. All the ideas that brought me here I will leave behind. In
the future I will try to get all the good things out of life that I
can--the really good things, a glimpse of which I got through my books.
I think there is still sufficient grey matter in my brain for that."
I took the train for New York, but stopped off at Plattsburg and Albany
to deliver some messages from the poor unfortunates to their relatives.
I arrived in New York at twelve o'clock at night, having had nothing to
eat all day. My relatives and friends had left the station, but were
waiting up for me in my brother's house. This time I went straight
to them. My father had died while I was in the pipe house, and now I
determined that I would be at last a kind son to the mother who had
never deserted me. I think she felt that I had changed and the tears
that flowed from her eyes were not all from unhappiness. She told me
about my father's last illness, and how cheerful he had been. "I bought
him a pair of new shoes a month before he died," she said. "He laughed
when he saw them and said: 'What extravagance! To buy shoes for a dying
man!'"
Living right among them, I met again, of course, many of my old
companions in crime, and found that many of them had thought I was
dead. It was only the other day that I met "Al", driving a peddlers
wagon. He, like me, had squared it. "I thought you died in the pipe
house, Jim," he said. This has happened to me a dozen times since my
return. I had spent so much time in stir that the general impression
among the guns at home seemed to be that I had "gone up the escape."
As a general thing I found that guns who had squared it and become
prosperous had never been very successful grafters. Some of the best
box-men and burglars in the business are now bar-tenders in saloons
owned by former small fry among the dips. There are waiters now in
saloons and concert halls on the bowery who were far cleverer thieves
than the men who employ them, and who are worth thousands. Hungry Joe
is an instance. Once he was King of confidence men, and on account of
his great plausibility got in on a noted person, on one occasion, for
several thousand dollars. And now he will beg many a favor of men he
would not look at in the old days.
A grafter is jealous, suspicious and vindictive. I had always known
that, but never realized it so keenly as I have since my return from
the mad-house. Above everything else a grafter is suspicious, whether
he has squared it or not--suspicious of his pals and of everybody
else. When my old pals saw that I was not working with them, they
wondered what my private graft was. When I told them I was on the level
and was looking for a job, they either laughed or looked at me with
suspicion in their eyes. They saw I was looking good (well-dressed)
and they could not understand it. They put me down, some of them, as
a stool-pigeon. They all feel instinctively that I am no longer with
them, and most of them have given me the frosty mit. Only the bums
who used to be grafters sail up to me in the Bowery. They have not
got enough sense left even for suspicion. The dips who hang out in the
thieves' resorts are beginning to hate me; not because I want to injure
them, for I don't, but because they think I do. I told one of them, an
old friend, that I was engaged in some literary work. He was angry in
an instant and said: "You door mat thief. You couldn't get away with a
coal-scuttle."
One day I was taking the editor of this book through the Bowery,
pointing out to him some of my old resorts, when I met an old pal
of mine, who gave me the glad hand. We had a drink, and I, who was
feeling good, started in to jolly him a little. He had told me about
an old pal of ours who had just fallen for a book and was confined in a
Brooklyn jail. I took out a piece of "copy" paper and took the address,
intending to pay a visit to him, for everybody wants sympathy. What
a look went over that grafter's face! I saw him glance quickly at the
editor and then at me, and I knew then he had taken alarm, and probably
thought we were Pinkerton men, or something as bad. I tried to carry
it off with a laugh, for the place was full of thieves, and told him
I would get him a job on a newspaper. He answered hastily that he had
a good job in the pool-room and was on the level. He started in to try
to square it with my companion by saying that he "adored a man who had
a job." A little while afterwards he added that he hated anybody who
would graft after he had got an honest job. Then, to wind up his little
game of squaring himself, he ended by declaring that he had recently
obtained a very good position.
That was one of the incidents that queered me with the more intelligent
thieves. He spread the news, and whenever I meet one of that gang on
the Bowery I get the cold shoulder, a gun is so mighty quick to grow
suspicious. A grafter who follows the business for years is a study
in psychology, and his two most prominent characteristics are fear and
suspicion. If some stool-pigeon tips him off to the police, and he is
sent to stir, he invariably suspects the wrong person. He tells his
friends in stir that "Al done him," and pretty soon poor Al, who may
be an honest thief, is put down as a rat. If Al goes to stir very often
the result is a cutting match between the two.
There are many convicts in prison who lie awake at night concocting
stories about other persons, accusing them of the vilest of actions. If
the prisoner can get hold of a Sunday newspaper he invariably reads the
society news very carefully. He can tell more about the Four Hundred
than the swells will ever know about themselves; and he tells very
little good of them. Such stories are fabricated in prison and repeated
out of it.
When I was in Auburn stir I knew a young fellow named Sterling, as
straight a thief as ever did time. He had the courage of a grenadier
and objected to everything that was mean and petty. He therefore
had many enemies in prison, and they tried to make him unpopular by
accusing him of a horrible crime. The story reached my ears and I
tried to put a stop to it, but I only did him the more harm. When
Sterling heard the tale he knocked one of his traducers senseless
with an iron bar. Tongues wagged louder than ever and one day he
came to me and talked about it and I saw a wild look in his eyes.
His melancholia started in about that time, and he began to suspect
everybody, including me. His enemies put the keepers against him and
they made his life almost unbearable. Generally the men that tip off
keepers to the alleged violent character of some convict are the worst
stool-pigeons in the prison. Even the Messiah could not pass through
this world without arousing the venom of the crowd. How in the name of
common sense, then, could Sterling, or I, or any other grafter expect
otherwise than to be traduced? It was the politicians who were the
cause of Christ's trials; and the politicians are the same to-day as
they were then. They have very little brains, but they have the low
cunning which is the first attribute of the human brute. They pretend
to be the people's advisers, but pile up big bank accounts. Even the
convict scum that come from the lower wards of the city have all the
requisites of the successful politician. Nor can one say that these
criminals are of low birth, for they trace their ancestors back for
centuries. The fact that convicts slander one another with glee and
hear with joy of the misfortunes of their fellows, is a sign that
they come from a very old family; from the wretched human stock that
demanded the crucifixion of Christ.
This evil trait, suspiciousness, is something I should like to
eliminate from my own character. Even now I am afflicted with it.
Since my release I often have the old feeling come over me that I am
being watched; and sometimes without any reason at all. Only recently
I was riding on a Brooklyn car, when a man sitting opposite happened
to glance at me two or three times. I gave him an irritated look. Then
he stared at me, to see what was the matter, I suppose. That was too
much, and I asked him, with my nerves on edge, if he had ever seen me
before. He said "No", with a surprised look, and I felt cheap, as I
always do after such an incident. A neighbor of mine has a peculiar
habit of watching me quietly whenever I visit his family. I know that
he is ignorant of my past but when he stares at me, I am rattled.
I begin to suspect that he is studying me, wondering who I am. The
other day I said to him, irritably: "Mr. K----, you have a bad habit
of watching people." He laughed carelessly and I, getting hot, said:
"Mr. K---- when I visit people it is not with the intention of stealing
anything." I left the house in a huff and his sister, as I afterwards
found, rebuked him for his bad manners.
Indeed, I have lost many a friend by being over suspicious. I am
suspicious even of my family. Sometimes when I sit quietly at home
with my mother in the evening, as has grown to be a habit with me, I
see her look at me. I begin immediately to think that she is wondering
whether I am grafting again. It makes me very nervous, and I sometimes
put on my hat and go out for a walk, just to be alone. One day, when
I was in stir, my mother visited me, as she always did when they gave
her a chance. In the course of our conversation she told me that on my
release I had better leave the city and go to some place where I was
not known. "For," she said, "your character, my boy, is bad." I grabbed
her by the arm and exclaimed: "Who is it that is circulating these
d---- stories about me?" My poor mother merely meant, of course, that
I was known as a thief, but I thought some of the other convicts had
slandered me to her. It was absurd, of course, but the outside world
cannot understand how suspicious a grafter is. I have often seen a man,
who afterwards became insane, begin being queer through suspiciousness.
Well, as I have said, I found the guns suspicious of me, when I
told them I had squared it, or when I refused to say anything about
my doings. Of course I don't care, for I hate the Bowery now and
everything in it. Whenever I went, as I did several times with my
editor, to a gun joint, a feeling of disgust passed over me. I pity my
old pals, but they no longer interest me. I look upon them as failures.
I have seen a new light and I shall follow it. Whatever the public may
think of this book, it has already been a blessing to me. For it has
been honest work that I and my friend the editor have done together,
and leads me to think that there may yet be a new life for me. I
feel now that I should prefer to talk and associate with the meanest
workingman in this city than with the swellest thief. For a long time
I have really despised myself. When old friends and relatives look at
me askance I say to myself: "How can I prove to them that I am not the
same as I was in the past?" No wonder the authorities thought I was
mad. I have spent the best years of my life behind the prison bars. I
could have made out of myself almost anything I wanted, for I had the
three requisites of success: personal appearance, health and, I think,
some brains. But what have I done? After ruining my life, I have not
even received the proverbial mess of pottage. As I look back upon my
life both introspectively and retrospectively I do not wonder that
society at large despises the criminal.
I am not trying to point a moral or pose as a reformer. I cannot say
that I quit the old life because of any religious feeling. I am not
one of those who have reformed by finding Jesus at the end of a gas
pipe which they were about to use as a black jack on a citizen, just
in order to finger his long green. I only saw by painful experience
that there is nothing in a life of crime. I ran up against society,
and found that I had struck something stronger and harder than a stone
wall. But it was not that alone that made me reform. What was it?
Was it the terrible years I spent in prison? Was it the confinement
in a mad-house, where I daily saw old pals of mine become drivelling
idiots? Was it my reading of the great authors, and my becoming
acquainted with the beautiful thoughts of the great men of the world?
Was it a combination of these things? Perhaps so, but even that does
not entirely explain it, does not go deep enough. I have said that I
am not religious, and I am not. And yet I have experienced something
indefinable, which I suppose some people might call an awakening of
the soul. What is that, after all, but the realization that your way of
life is ruining you even to the very foundation of your nature?
Perhaps, after all, I am not entirely lacking in religion; for
certainly the character of Christ strongly appeals to me. I don't care
for creeds, but the personality of the Nazarene, when stripped of the
aroma of divinity, appeals to all thinking men, I care not whether they
are atheists, agnostics or sceptics. Any man that has understanding
reveres the life of Christ, for He practiced what He preached and died
for humanity. He was a perfect specimen of manhood, and had developed
to the highest degree that trait which is lacking in most all men--the
faculty humane.
I believe that a time comes in the lives of many grafters when they
desire to reform. Some do reform for good and all, and I shall show the
world that I am one of them; but the difficulties in the way are great,
and many fall again by the wayside.
They come out of prison marked men. Many observers can tell an
ex-convict on sight. The lock-step is one of the causes. It gives a
man a peculiar gait which he will retain all his life. The convicts
march close together and cannot raise their chests. They have to keep
their faces turned towards the screw. Breathing is difficult, and most
convicts suffer in consequence from catarrh, and a good many from lung
trouble. Walking in lock-step is not good exercise, and makes the men
nervous. When the convict is confined in his cell he paces up and down.
The short turn is bad for his stomach, and often gets on his mind.
That short walk will always have control of me. I cannot sit down now
to eat or write, without jumping up every five minutes in order to
take that short walk. I have become so used to it that I do not want
to leave the house, for I can pace up and down in my room. I can take
that small stretch all day long and not be tired, but if I walk a long
straight distance I get very much fatigued. When I wait for a train
I always begin that short walk on the platform. I have often caught
myself walking just seven feet one way, and then turning around and
walking seven feet in the opposite direction. Another physical mark,
caused by a criminal life rather than by a long sojourn in stir, is
an expressionless cast of countenance. The old grafter never expresses
any emotions. He has schooled himself until his face is a mask, which
betrays nothing.
A much more serious difficulty in the way of reform is the ex-convict's
health which is always bad if a long term of years has been served.
Moreover, his brain has often lost its equilibrium and powers of
discernment. When he gets out of prison his chance of being able to
do any useful work is slight. He knows no trade, and he is not strong
enough to do hard day labor. He is given only ten dollars, when he
leaves stir, with which to begin life afresh. A man who has served a
long term is not steady above the ears until he has been at liberty
several months; and what can such a man do with ten dollars? It would
be cheaper for the state in the end to give an ex-convict money enough
to keep him for several months; for then a smaller percentage would
return to stir. It would give the man a chance to make friends, to look
for a job, and to show the world that he is in earnest.
A criminal who is trying to reform is generally a very helpless
being. He was not, to begin with, the strongest man mentally, and
after confinement is still less so. He is preoccupied, suspicious
and a dreamer, and when he gets a glimpse of himself in all his
naked realities, is apt to become depressed and discouraged. He is
easily led, and certainly no man needs a good friend as much as the
ex-convict. He is distrusted by everybody, is apt to be "piped off"
wherever he goes, and finds it hard to get work which he can do. There
are hundreds of men in our prisons to-day who, if they could find
somebody who would trust them and take a genuine interest in them,
would reform and become respectable citizens. That is where the Tammany
politician, whom I have called Senator Wet Coin is a better man than
the majority of reformers. When a man goes to him and says he wants to
square it he takes him by the hand, trusts and helps him. Wet Coin does
not hand him a soup ticket and a tract nor does he hold on tight to his
own watch chain fearing for his red super, hastily bidding the ex-gun
to be with Jesus.
EDITOR'S POSTSCRIPT.
The life of the thief is at an end; and the life of the man and good
citizen has begun. For I am convinced that Jim is strictly on the
level, and will remain so. The only thing yet lacking to make his
reform sure is a job. I, and those of my friends who are interested,
have as yet failed to find anything for him to do that is, under the
circumstances, desirable. The story of my disappointments in this
respect is a long one, and I shall not tell it. I have learned to think
that patience is the greatest of the virtues; and of this virtue an
ex-gun needs an enormous amount. If Jim and his friends prove good in
this way, the job will come. But waiting is hard, for Jim is nervous,
in bad health, with an old mother to look after, and with new ambitions
which make keen his sense of time lost.
One word about his character: I sometimes think of my friend the
ex-thief as "Light-fingered Jim"; and in that name there lingers a note
of vague apology. As he told his story to me, I saw everywhere the mark
of the natural rogue, of the man grown with a roguish boy's brain.
The humor of much of his tale seemed to me strong. I was never able
to look upon him as a deliberate malefactor. He constantly impressed
me as gentle and imaginative, impressionable and easily influenced,
but not naturally vicious or vindictive. If I am right, his reform is
nothing more or less than the coming to years of sober maturity. He is
now thirty-five years old, and as he himself puts it: "Some men acquire
wisdom at twenty-one, others at thirty-five, and some never."
EVERYMAN
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End of Project Gutenberg's The Autobiography of a Thief, by Hutchins Hapgood