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Autobiography of a Thief

<h2> CHAPTER XI. Back to Prison. </h2> 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 [229] 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 [230] 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. [231] 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 [232] 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 [233] 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 [234] 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. [235] 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 [236] 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. [237] 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 [238] 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 [239] 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 [240] 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 [241] 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 [242] 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 [243] 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: [244] "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 [245] 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 [246] 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 [247] 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 [248] 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 [249] 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 [250] 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 [251] 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 [252] 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. [253] 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 [254] 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. [255] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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