The Autobiography of a Thief (Illustrated)

Overview

I have been a professional thief for more than twenty years. Half of that time I have spent in state's prison, and the other half in "grafting" in one form or another. I was a good pickpocket and a fairly successful burglar; and I have known many of the best crooks in the country. I have left the business for good, and my reasons will appear in the course of this narrative. I shall tell my story with entire frankness. I shall not try to defend myself. I shall try merely to tell the truth. Perhaps in so doing I shall explain myself.

I was born on the east side of New York City in 1868, of poor but honest parents. My father was an Englishman who had married an Irish girl and emigrated to America, where he had a large family, no one of whom, with the [16] exception of myself, went wrong. For many years he was an employee of Brown Brothers and Company and was a sober, industrious man, and a good husband and kind father. To me, who was his favorite, he was perhaps too kind. I was certainly a spoiled child. I remember that when I was five years old he bought me a twenty-five dollar suit of clothes. I was a vigorous, handsome boy, with red, rosy cheeks and was not only the pet of my family, but the life of the neighborhood as well.

At that time, which is as far back as I can remember, we were living on Munro Street, in the Seventh Ward. This was then a good residential neighborhood, and we were comfortable in our small, wooden house. The people about us were Irish and German, the large Jewish emigration not having begun yet. Consequently, lower New York did not have such a strong business look as it has now, but was cleanly and respectable. The gin-mills were fewer in number, and were comparatively decent. When the Jews came they started many basement saloons, or caf�s, and for the first time, I believe, the social evil began to be connected with the drinking places. [17]

I committed my first theft at the age of six. Older heads put me up to steal money from the till of my brother's grocery store. It happened this way. There were several much older boys in the neighborhood who wanted money for row-boating and theatres. One was eighteen years old, a ship-caulker; and another was a roustabout of seventeen. I used to watch these boys practice singing and dancing in the big marble lots in the vicinity. How they fired my youthful imagination! They told me about the theatres then in vogue�Tony Pastor's, the old Globe, Wood's Museum and Josh Hart's Theatre Comique, afterwards owned by Harrigan and Hart.

One day, George, the roustabout, said to me: "Kid, do you want to go row-boating with us?" When I eagerly consented he said it was too bad, but the boat cost fifty cents and he only had a ten-cent stamp (a small paper bill: in those days there was very little silver in circulation). I did not bite at once, I was so young, and they treated me to one of those wooden balls fastened to a rubber string that you throw out and catch on the rebound. I was tickled to death. I shall never forget that day as long as I live. It was a Saturday, and all [18] day long those boys couldn't do too much for me.

Towards evening they explained to me how to rob my brother's till. They arranged to be outside the store at a certain hour, and wait until I found an opportunity to pass the money to them. My mother watched in the store that evening, but when she turned her back I opened the till and gave the eight or ten dollars it contained to the waiting boys. We all went row-boating and had a jolly time. But they were not satisfied with that. What I had done once, I could do again, and they held out the theatre to me, and pretended to teach me how to dance the clog. Week in and week out I furnished them with money, and in recompense they would sometimes take me to a matin�e. What a joy! How I grew to love the vaudeville artists with their songs and dances, and the wild Bowery melodramas! It was a great day for Indian plays, and the number of Indians I have scalped in imagination, after one of these shows, is legion.

Some of the small boys, however, who did not share in the booty grew jealous and told my father what was doing. The result was that a certain part of my body was sore for weeks [19] afterwards. My feelings were hurt, too, for I did not know at that time that I was doing anything very bad. My father, indeed, accompanied the beating with a sermon, telling me that I had not only broken God's law but had robbed those that loved me. One of my brothers, who is now a policeman in the city service, told me that I had taken my ticket for the gallows. The brother I had robbed, who afterwards became a truckman, patted me on the head and told me not to do it again. He was always a good fellow. And yet they all seemed to like to have me play about the streets with the other little boys, perhaps because the family was large, and there was not much room in the house.

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