Samuel A. Bailey - Ups And Downs of a Crooks Life

UPS AND DOWNS

OF A

CROOKS LIFE

BY AN EX-CONVICT,

SAMUEL A. BAILEY

PUBLISHED BY

THE AUTHOR

1889

SAMUEL A. BAILEY.

IT was while serving the last days of my five years sentence in Clinton Prison, that I began to think of what I could do to earn an honest living after I should once more be a free man. No one who has not worn the prison uniform can realize how almost impossible it is for a man with the brand of an ex-convict upon him to find employment. The curse of the penitentiary is upon him, and it pursues him with relentless energy wherever he turns.

I had been one of the best known of New Yorks criminal classes for many years, and SAMUEL A. BAILEY, THE FORGER, was a familiar name to the police. It was while turning over this matter in my mindfor I had long since determined that no human power should ever induce me to return to my criminal careerthat I concluded to write the story of my life. This little book is a truthful history of my somewhat eventful life, and associations with the well-known criminals of the day, and was written in my cell at Clinton Prison by permission of the prison officials.

If I can sell enough of my books to earn a living, the temptation that sometimes drives ex-convicts back to crime will, in my case at least, be removed, and I will again have a new start in life.

SAMUEL A. BAILEY

Clinton Prison, New York

HOW I MET THE GANG OF FORGERS

IT was a cold morning in December, in 1871, when I stepped from the rear car of the night express on the New York and New Haven Railroad, and stood for a moment hesitating, in front of the Grand Central Depot. The wind was whirling the snow in little gusts to the right, on Forty-second Street, and up Fourth Avenue; and flakes were falling so fast that I could scarcely see the horse-cars as they disappeared into the tunnel going down-town. It was one of the days when New Yorkers always take a surface-car, the elevated, or a cab, even if they have only three or four blocks to go. But I hadnt even a nickel in my pocket, and the friend I wanted to see lived on Elizabeth Street, just off the Bowery.

Without more delay, I buttoned my coat about my ears and struck out down Fourth Avenue to Cooper Union, and then along the Bowery to Hester Street, until I turned the corner which brought me directly in front of the tenement-house at No. 38 Elizabeth Street. I pushed open the door, and climbed the stairs to the third floor, and knocked at the door of the back room. In a few moments a young woman, with disordered hair, and a general appearance which showed that she had just arisen from her bed, answered my summons, and wanted to know why I knocked.

I asked if a man named Mickey Cobey lived there, and she said that he did; but had just gone down to the police court, at the Tombs, to try and get a girl out who had been arrested the day before.

Mickey was one of the Tombs court hangers around, a sort of a snide, who pretended to have a political pull, and got two or three, and sometimes even as high as five dollars, for getting people discharged who had been locked up. He never pretended to be a lawyer, but worked on the inside, through friends of whatever judge happened to be on the bench.

I told the woman with whom Mickey was living that I was a friend of his, and if she didnt mind, I would sit down and wait until he came home. She said that was all right; and opening the door of a little cupboard, took out a bottle, and asked me if I would go down-stairs and get twenty-five cents worth of whisky. I told her that I didnt have any money; so she dived down into one of her stockings and produced a quarter, which she gave to me, and I got the whiskey. She fished out of the cupboard a couple of rather dirty lager beer glasses, and we were just finishing the liquor when somebody knocked at the door, and Mickeys woman shouted to come in.

The visitor proved to be James Harris, better known as English Jim, a bank burglar who had done many a smart job. He was well dressed, wore a large solitaire diamond pin in his shirt-front, and had the appearance of a well-to-do Wall Street broker. I looked at him, and sized him up as a determined man who would stand no fooling with the cards. He closed the door carefully, stepped up to the woman, whom he called Lizzie, and asked where Mickey was.

As soon as his eye fell on me, he whispered in the womans ear, and asked who that man was sitting on the lounge. She turned around, facing me, and replied that she didnt know, except that I was a friend of Mickeys and had just got out from the jug, and was at present dead broke. Jim seemed to be thinking something over in his mind for a few moments, and then he took a seat on the sofa opposite me, and said:

I called to see Mickey, and put him in the way of raising some boodle, but he is out. My name is English Jim, and if you can keep your mouth shut I will give you a chance to make some money. I am not alone in this thing, but I will speak to my partners, and if they dont kick, I will be back and let you know.

I said I would be much obliged to him if he could put me on my feet, because I had been doing time, and hadnt a red.

Jim picked up his hat and went out, and Lizzie put on the tea-kettle, and began to arrange her toilette, for up to this time she had nothing on but her stockings and her night-dress. By the time the tea began to boil, she looked a good deal better, and would have been quite presentable but for a few small blotches in her face, which she was trying to putty up with some powder in front of a little piece of broken looking-glass. Pretty soon she went out with the bottle we had emptied, and came back again with a girl she introduced to me as Miss Woods, and I noticed with some satisfaction that the bottle was full of booze.

Miss Woods looked rather the worse for wear. Her hair was unkempt, and her clothes looked very much as if they had been thrown at her, and stuck where they fell. She took a seat with me on the lounge, and told me she had been arrested the night before, but had just got off with a fine, the amount of which she had the good luck to have in her pocket. Lizzie did the honors by passing around the drinks, and I was about to apologize for not being able to set them up again on my own account, when the door opened, and English Jim returned.

He politely took off his hat, and told the girls that he was sorry, but they would have to excuse me for a little while, as we had some particular business to attend to. He then winked to me to go out with him, and I followed him down the stairs, and out into the street. We walked along Elizabeth Street until we came to Grand Street, where we turned to the right and entered a lager-beer saloon. Jim tipped a wink to the bar-tender as we went in, saying that I was all right, and to give me anything that I should call for, and he would settle the bill. He went out at once, with the remark that he was going to see his partners.

I called for a cigar, and sat down at one of the tables, when the bartender came up with a couple of glasses of brandy, and asked me to drink with him.

Its a pretty sharp morning, said he, and brandy is just about the right thing a day like this.

It is quite fresh, said I, and I dont mind if I do take a nipper.

You are a very lucky man, continued the bartender, in getting work with such gentlemen.

We were conversing about my hard luck, when the street door opened, and in walked English Jim, with three other men, who were as well-dressed as he. There was nothing about any of them that would indicate that they were anything but business men of first-rate standing. The tallest of them was dressed in the height of fashion, with a high silk dicer, a light beaver overcoat thrown wide open and showing a fine satin lining, and a pair of patent leather shoes. I sized him up at that time as being the boss of the gang, and I could see that he didnt want to make my acquaintance. He looked over my butternut-colored prison suit and rough brown overcoat, and then glanced at my beard, which hadnt been cut for two weeks before leaving prison.