Chapter I: Preface

It may not be amiss to remark, in explanation of the startling and sensational title chosen for this production, that logic has not yet succeeded in framing a title-page which shall clearly indicate the nature of a book. The greatest adepts have frequently taken refuge in some fortuitous word, which has served their purpose better than the best results of their analysis. So it was in the present case. "DANGER!" is a thrilling and warning word, suggestive of the locomotive headlight, and especially applicable to the subject matter of the following pages, in which the crimes of a great city are dissected and exposed from the arcanum or confessional of what we may be pardoned for designating the best-known criminal law offices in America.

So much for the title. A few words as to the _motif_ of the publication. Despite the efficiency of our police and the activity of our many admirable reforming and reclaiming systems, crime still abounds, while the great tide of social impurity continues to roll on with unabated velocity. Optimists and philanthropic dreamers in every age have pictured in glowing colors the gradual but sure approach of the millennium, yet we are, apparently, still as far from that elysium of purity and unselfishness as ever. Whenever the wolf and the lamb lie down together, the innocent bleater is invariably inside the other's ravenous maw. There may be--and we have reason to know that there is--a marked diminution in certain forms of crime, but there are others in which surprising fertility of resource and ingenuity of method but too plainly evince that the latest developments of science and skill are being successfully pressed into the service of the modern criminal. Increase of education and scientific skill not only confers superior facilities for the successful perpetration of crime, but also for its concealment. The revelations of the newspapers, from week to week, but too plainly indicate an undercurrent of vice and iniquity, whose depth and foulness defy all computation.

We are not in accord with those pessimists who speak of New York as a boiling caldron of crime, without any redeeming features or hopeful elements. But our practice in the courts and our association with criminals of every kind, and the knowledge consequently gained of their history and antecedents, have demonstrated that, in a great city like New York, the germs of evil in human life are developed into the rankest maturity. As the eloquent Dr. Guthrie, in his great work, "The City, its Sins and its Sorrows," remarks: "Great cities many have found to be great curses. It had been well for many an honest lad and unsuspecting country girl that hopes of higher wages and opportunities of fortune, that the gay attire and gilded story of some acquaintance, had never turned their steps cityward, nor turned them from the simplicity and safety of their country home. Many a foot that once lightly pressed the heather or brushed the dewy grass has wearily trodden in darkness, guilt and remorse, on these city pavements. Happy had it been for many had they never exchanged the starry skies for the lamps of the town, nor had left their quiet villages for the throng and roar of the big city's streets. Weil for them had they heard no roar but the river's, whose winter flood it had been safer to breast; no roar but ocean's, whose stormiest waves it had been safer to ride, than encounter the flood of city temptations, which has wrecked their virtue and swept them into ruin."

By hoisting the DANGER signal at the mast-head, as it were, we have attempted to warn young men and young women--the future fathers and mothers of America--against the snares and pitfalls of the crime and the vice that await the unwary in New York. Our own long and extensive practice at the bar has furnished most of the facts; some, again, are on file in our criminal courts of record; and some, as has already been hinted, have been derived from the confidential revelations of our private office. With the desire that this book shall prove a useful warning and potent monitor to those for whose benefit and instruction it has been designed, and in the earnest hope that, by its influence, some few may be saved from prison, penitentiary, lunatic asylum, or suicides' purgatory, it is now submitted to the intelligent readers of America,

By the public's obedient servants, HOWE & HUMMEL.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I. Ancient and Modern Prisons--Some of the City's Ancient Prisons--How Malefactors were Formerly Housed--Ancient Bridewells and Modern Jails,

CHAPTER II. Criminals and their Haunts--The Past and Present Gangs of the City--How and Where they Herd--Prominent Characters that have passed into History,

CHAPTER III. Street Arabs of Both Sexes--The Pretty Flower and News Girls--The Young Wharf Rats and their eventful Lives--How they all Live, where they Come From, and where they finally Finish their Career,

CHAPTER IV. Store Girls--Their Fascinations, Foibles and Temptations,

CHAPTER V. The Pretty Waiter Girl--Concert Saloons and how they are Managed--How the Pretty Waitresses Live and upon Whom, and how the Unwary are Fleeced and Beguiled--A Midnight Visit to one of the Dives,

CHAPTER VI. Shoplifters--Who they are and how they are made--Their Methods of Operating and upon whom--The Fashionable Kleptomaniac and her Opposite--The Modern Devices of Female Thieves,

CHAPTER VII. Kleptomania--Extraordinary Revelations--A Wealthy Kleptomaniac in the Toils of a Black-mailing Detective,

CHAPTER VIII. Panel Houses and Panel Thieves--The Inmates--The Victims--The Gains--Complete Exposure of the Manner of Operation, and how Unsuspecting Persons are Robbed,

CHAPTER IX. A Theatrical Romance--Kate Fisher, the Famous Mazeppa, involved--Manager Hemmings charged by Fast paced Mrs. Bethune with Larceny,

CHAPTER X. A Mariner's Wooing--Captain Hazard's Gushing Letters--Breakers on a Matrimonial Lee Shore--He is Grounded on Divorce Shoals,

CHAPTER XI. The Baron and "Baroness"--The Romance of Baron Henry Arnous de Reviere, and "The Buckeye Baroness," Helene Stille,

CHAPTER XII. The Demi-monde,

CHAPTER XIII. Passion's Slaves and Victims--A Matter of Untold History--The Terrible Machinery of the Law as a Means of Persecution--Edwin James's Rascality,

CHAPTER XIV. Procuresses and their Victims--Clandestine Meetings at Seemingly Respectable Resorts--The "Introduction House,"

CHAPTER XV. Quacks and Quackery--Specimen Advertisements--The Bait Held Out, and the Fish who are Expected to Bite,

CHAPTER XVI. Abortion and the Abortionists--The Career of Madame Restell--Rosenzweig's Good Luck,

CHAPTER XVII. Divorce--The Chicanery of Divorce Specialists--How Divorce Laws Vary in Certain Slates--Sweeping Amendments Necessary--Illustrative Cases,

CHAPTER XVIII. Black-mail--Who Practice it, How it is Perpetrated, and Upon Whom--The Birds who are Caught, and the Fowlers who Ensnare them--With other Interesting Matters on the same Subject,

CHAPTER XIX. About Detectives--The "Javerts," "Old Sleuths" and "Buckets" of Fiction as Contrasted with the Genuine Article--Popular Notions of Detective Work Altogether Erroneous--An Ex-detective's Views--The Divorce Detective,

CHAPTER XX. Gambling and Gamblers--The Delusions that Control the Devotees of Policy--What the Mathematical Chances are Against the Players--Tricks in French Pools--"Bucking the Tiger"--"Ropers-in"--How Strangers are Victimized,

CHAPTER XXI. Gambling made Easy--The Last Ingenious Scheme to Fool the Police--Flat-houses Turned into Gambling Houses--"Stud-horse Poker" and "Hide the Heart,"

CHAPTER XXII. Slumming--Depravity of Life in Billy McGlory's--A Three-hours' Visit to the Place--Degraded Men and Lost Women who are Nightly in this Criminal Whirlpool,