Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations - The Veil Lifted, and Light Thrown on Crime and its Causes, - and Criminals and their Haunts. Facts and Disclosures.

Abraham H. Hummel, William F. Howe

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• Publié par: tirel
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 21
• Langue: English

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Wiles and Temptations, by William Howe and Abraham Hummel
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Title: Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations
The Veil Lifted, and Light Thrown on Crime and its Causes,
and Criminals and their Haunts. Facts and Disclosures.
Author: William Howe
Abraham Hummel
Release Date: February 29, 2008 [EBook #24717]
Language: English
Character set encoding: PDF
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DANGER! ***DANGER!


A TRUE HISTORY OF A GREAT CITY'S

WILES and TEMPTATIONS


THE VEIL LIFTED, AND LIGHT THROWN ON

CRIME AND ITS CAUSES,

AND

CRIMINALS AND THEIR HAUNTS.

FACTS AND DISCLOSURES



BY

HOWE & HUMMEL.

BUFFALO:

THE COURIER COMPANY, PRINTERS.

1886



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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,