Back Aa

Autobiography of a Thief

<h2> CHAPTER IX. In Stir and Out. </h2> Some of the most disagreeable days I ever spent in prison were the holidays, only three of which during the year, however, were kept—Fourth of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas. In Sing Sing there was no work on those days, and we could lie abed longer in the morning. The food was somewhat better than usual. Breakfast consisted of boiled ham, mashed potatoes and gravy, and a cup of coffee with milk. After mess we went, as usual, to chapel, and then gave a kind of vaudeville show, all with local talent. We sang rag-time and sentimental songs, some of us played on an instrument, such as the violin, mandolin, or cornet, and the band gave the latest pieces from comic opera. After the show was over we went to the mess-room again where we received a pan containing a piece of pie, some cheese, a few apples, as much bread as we desired and—a real luxury in stir—two cigars. With our booty we then [183] returned to our cells, at about eleven o'clock in the morning, and after the guards had made the rounds to see that none of the birds had gone astray, we were locked up until the next morning, without anything more to eat. We were permitted to talk to one another from our cells until five o'clock, when the night guards went on duty. Such is—just imagine it—a great day in Sing Sing! The gun, no matter how big a guy he is, even if he has robbed a bank and stolen millions, is far worse off than the meanest laborer, be he ever so poor. He may have only a crust, but he has that priceless boon, his liberty. At Auburn the routine on holidays is much the same as that of Sing Sing; but one is not compelled to go to chapel, which is a real kindness. I don't think a man ought to be forced to go to church, even in stir, against his will. On holidays in Auburn a man may stay in his cell instead of attending divine service, if he so desires, and not be punished for it. Many a con prefers not to go even to the vaudeville show, which at Auburn is given by outside talent, but remains quietly all day in his cell. There is one other great holiday privilege at Auburn, which some of the convicts [184] appreciate more than I did. When the clock strikes twelve o'clock the convicts, locked in their cells, start in to make the rest of the night hideous, by pounding on the doors, playing all sorts of instruments, blowing whistles, and doing everything else that would make a noise. There is no more sleep that night, for everything is given over to Bedlam, until five thirty in the morning, when discipline again reigns, and the nervous man who detests these holidays sighs with pleasure, and says to himself: "I am so glad that at last everything is quiet in this cursed stir." What with poor food, little air and exercise, no female society, bad habits and holidays, it is no wonder that there are many attempts, in spite of the danger, to escape from stir. Most of these attempts are unsuccessful, but a few succeed. One of the cleverest escapes I know of happened during my term at Auburn. B—— was the most feared convict in the prison. He was so intelligent, so reckless and so good a mechanic that the guards were afraid he would make his elegant any day. Indeed, if ever a man threw away gifts for not even the proverbial mess of pottage, it was this man B——. He was the cleverest man I [185] ever met in stir or out. It was after one of the delightful holidays in Auburn that B——, who was a nervous man, decided to make his gets. He picked a quarrel with another convict and was so rough that the principal keeper almost decided to let him off; but when B—— spat in his face he changed his mind and put him in the dungeon. I have already mentioned this ram-shackle building at Auburn. It was the worst yet. All B——'s clothing was taken off and an old coat, shirt, and trousers without buttons were given him. An old piece of bay rope was handed him to tie around his waist, and he was left in darkness. This was what he wanted, for, although they had stripped him naked and searched him, he managed to conceal a saw, which he used to such good purpose that on the second night he had sawed himself into the yard. Instead of trying to go over the wall, as most cons would have done, B—— placed a ladder, which he found in the repair shop, against the wall, and when the guards discovered next morning that B—— was not in the dungeon, and saw the ladder on the wall, they thought he had escaped, and did not search the stir but notified the towns to look after him. He [186] was not found, of course, for he was hiding in the cellar of the prison. A night or two afterwards he went to the tailor shop, selected the best suit of clothes in the place, opened the safe which contained the valuables of the convicts, with a piece of steel and a hammer, thus robbing his fellow sufferers, and escaped by the ladder. After several months of freedom he was caught, sent back to stir, and forfeited half of his commutation time. A more tragic attempt was made by the convicts, Big Benson and Little Kick. They got tools from friends in the machine shop and started in to saw around the locks of their doors. They worked quietly, and were not discovered. The reason is that there is sometimes honor among thieves. Two of their friends in their own gallery, two on the gallery above and two on that underneath, tipped them off, by a cough or some other noise, whenever the night guard was coming; and they would cease their work with the saws. Convicts grow very keen in detecting the screw by the creaking of his boots on the wooden gallery floor; if they are not quite sure it is he, they often put a small piece of looking-glass underneath the door, and can [187] thus see down the gallery in either direction a certain distance. Whenever Benson and Kick were at work, they would accompany the noise of the saw with some other noise, so as to drown the former, for they knew that, although they had some friends among the convicts, there were others who, if they got next, would tip off the keepers that an escape was to be made. In the morning they would putty up the cuts made in the door during the night. One night when everything was ready, they slipped from their cells, put the mug on the guard, took away his cannister, and tied him to the bottom of one of their cells. They did the same to another guard, who was on the watch in the gallery below, went to the outside window on the Hudson side of Sing Sing, and putting a Jack, which they had concealed in the cell, between the bars of the window, spread them far apart, so that they could make their exit. At this point however they were discovered by a third guard, who fired at them, hitting Little Kick in the leg. The shot aroused the sergeant of the guards and he gave the alarm. Big Benson was just getting through the window when the whole pack of guards fired at him, killing him as dead as [188] a door-nail. Little Kick lost his nerve and surrendered, and was taken to the dungeon. Big Benson, who had been serving a term for highway robbery, was one of the best liked men in stir, and when rumors reached the convicts that he had been shot, pandemonium broke loose in the cells. They yelled and beat their coffee cups against the iron doors, and the officials were powerless to quiet them. There was more noise even than on a holiday at Auburn. Soon after I was transferred from Sing Sing to Auburn, a friend came to me and said: "Jimmy, are you on either of the shoe-shop galleries? No? Well, if you can get on Keeper Riley's gallery I think you can spring (escape)." Then he let me in on one of the cleverest beats I ever knew; if I could have succeeded in being put on that gallery I should not have finished my first term in State's prison. At that time work was slack and the men were locked in their cells most of the time. Leahy started in to dig out the bricks from the ceiling of his cell. Each day, when taking his turn for an hour in the yard, he would give the cement, which he had done up in small [189] packages, to friends, who would dump it in their buckets, the contents of which they would then throw into the large cesspool. While exercising in the yard, the cons would throw the bricks Leahy had removed on an old brick pile under the archway. After he had removed sufficient stuff to make a hole big enough to crawl through, all he had left to do was to saw a few boards, and remove a few tiles, and then he was on the roof. It is the habit of the guard, when he goes the rounds, to rap the ceiling of every cell with his stick, to see if there is an excavation. Leahy had guarded against this by filling a small box with sand and placing it in the opening. Then he pasted a piece of linen over the box and whitewashed it. Even when the screw came around to glance in his cell Leahy would continue to work, for he had rigged up a dummy of himself in bed. When he reached the roof, he dropped to a lower building, reached the wall which surrounds the prison, and with a rope lowered himself to the ground. With a brand new suit of clothes which a friend had stolen from the shop, Leahy went forth into the open, and was never caught. At Sing Sing an old chum of mine named [190] Tom escaped, and would never have been caught if he had not been so sentimental. Indeed, he was improvident in every way. He had been a well-known house-worker, and made lots of money at this graft, but he lived well and blew what he stole, and consequently did many years in prison. He was nailed for a house that was touched of "éclat" worth thousands, and convicted, though of this particular crime he was, I am convinced, innocent; of course, he howled like a stuck pig about the injustice of it, all his life. While he was in Raymond Street jail he got wind of the men who really did the job. They were pals and he asked them to try to turn him out. His girl, Tessie, heard of it and wanted to go to Police Headquarters and squeal on the others, to save her sweetheart. But Tom was frantic, for there was no squeal in him. You find grafters like that sometimes, and Tom was always sentimental. He certainly preferred to go to stir rather than have the name of being a belcher. So he went to Sing Sing for seven and a half years. He was a good mechanic and was assigned to a brick-laying job on the wall. He had an easy time in stir, for he had a screw right, and got many [191] luxuries through the Underground; and was not watched very closely. One day he put a suit of clothes under his stripes, vamoosed into a wood near by, and removed his stripes. He kept on walking till he reached Connecticut, which, as I have said, is the softest state in the Union. Tom would never have finished that bit in stir, if, as I have also said, he had not been so sentimental. When in prison a grafter continually thinks about his old pals and hang-outs, and the last scenes familiar to him before he went to stir. Tom was a well-known gun, with his picture in the Hall of Fame, and yet, after beating prison, and leaving years behind, and knowing that if caught he would have to do additional time, would have the authorities sore against him and be confined in the dark cell, he yet, in spite of all that, after a short time, made for his old haunts on the Bowery, where he was nailed by a fly-cop and sent back to Sing Sing. So much for the force of habit and of environment, especially when a grafter is a good fellow and loves his old pals. On one occasion Tom was well paid for being a good fellow. Jack was a well-known [192] pugilist who had become a grafter. His wife's sister had married a millionaire, and Jack stole the millions, which amounted, in this case, to only one hundred thousand dollars. For this he was put in prison for four years. While in stir, Tom, who had a screw right, did him many favors, which Jack remembered. Years afterwards they were both on the outside again. Tom was still a grafter, but Jack had gone to work for a police official as general utility man, and gained the confidence of his employer, who was chief of the detective force. The latter got Jack a position as private detective in one of the swellest hotels in Florida. Now, Tom happened to be grafting in that State, and met his old friend Jack at the hotel. Instead of tipping off the chief that Tom was a grafter, Jack staked his old pal, for he remembered the favors he had received in stir. Tom was at liberty for four years, and then was brought to police headquarters where the chief said to him: "I know that you met Jack in Florida, and I am sore because he did not tip me off." Tom replied indignantly: "He is not a hyena like your ilk. He is not capable of the basest of all crimes, ingratitude. I can forgive a man [193] who puts his hand in my pocket and steals my money. I can forgive him, for it may do him good. He may invest the money and become an honored member of the community. But the crime no man can forgive is ingratitude. It is the most inhuman of crimes and only your ilk is capable of it." The Chief smiled at Tom's sentiment—that was always his weak point—poor Tom!—and said: "Well, you are a clever thief, and I'm glad I was wise enough to catch you." Whereupon Tom sneered and remarked: "I could die of old age in this city for all of you and your detectives. I was tipped off to you by a Dicky Bird (stool pigeon) damn him!" I have known few grafters who had as much feeling as Tom. More than five years passed, and the time for my release from Auburn drew near. The last weeks dragged terribly; they seemed almost as long as the years that had gone before. Sometimes I thought the time would never come. The day before I was discharged I bade good-bye to my friends, who said to me, smiling: "She has come at last," or "It's near at hand," or "It was a long time a-coming." That night I built many castles in the [194] air, with the help of a large piece of opium: and continued to make the good resolutions I had begun some time before. I had permission from the night guard to keep my light burning after the usual hour, and the last book I read on my first term in stir was Tristram Shandy. Just before I went to bed I sang for the last time a popular prison song which had been running in my head for months: <div class="poetry-container"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> "Roll round, '89, '90, '91, sweet '92 roll around. How happy I shall be the morning I go free, sweet '92 roll around." </div> </div></div> Before I fell asleep I resolved to be good, to quit opium and not to graft any more. The resolution was easily made and I went to bed happy. I was up at day-break and penned a few last words to my friends and acquaintances remaining in stir. I promised some of them that I would see their friends on the outside and send them delicacies and a little money. They knew that I would keep my promise, for I have always been a man of my word; as many of the most successful grafters are. It is only the vogel-grafter, the petty larceny thief or the "sure-thing" article, who habitually breaks his word. Many people [195] think that a thief can not be trusted; and it certainly is true that the profession does not help to make a man virtuous in his personal relations. But it is also true that a man may be, and sometimes is, honorable in his dealings with his own world, and at the same time a desperate criminal in the other. It is not of course common, to find a thief who is an honest man; but is there very often an honest man anywhere, in the world of graft or out of it? If it is often, so much the better, but that has not been my experience. Does not everyone know that the men who do society the greatest injury have never done time; in fact, may never have broken any laws? I am not trying to excuse myself or my companions in crime, but I think the world is a little twisted in its ideas as to right and wrong, and who are the greatest sinners. When six o'clock on the final day came round it was a great relief. I went through the regular routine, and at eight o'clock was called to the front office, received a new suit of clothes, as well as my fare home and ten dollars with which to begin life afresh. "Hold on," I said, to the Warden. "I worked eighteen months. Under the new [196] piece-price plan I ought to be allowed a certain percentage of my earnings." The Warden, who was a good fellow and permitted almost anything to come in by the Underground Tunnel, asked the clerk if there was any more money for me. The clerk consulted with the keepers and then reported to the Warden that I was the most tired man that ever entered the prison; adding that it was very nervy of me to want more money, after they had treated me far better than the parent of the Prodigal treated his son. The Warden, thereupon, remarked to me that if I went pilfering again and were not more energetic than I had been in prison, I would never eat. "Goodbye," he concluded. "Well," I said, "I hope we'll never meet again." With my discharge papers in my hand, and in my mind a resolution never to go back to the stir where so many of my friends, strong fellows, too, had lost their lives or had become physical or mental wrecks, I left Auburn penitentiary and went forth into the free world. I had gone to stir a boy of twenty-one, and left it a man of twenty-six. I entered healthy, and left broken down in health, with the marks of the [197] jail-bird upon me; marks, mental and physical, that would never leave me, and habits that I knew would stick closer than a brother. I knew that there was nothing in a life of crime. I had tested that well enough. But there were times during the last months I spent in my cell, when, in spite of my good resolutions, I hated the outside world which had forced me into a place that took away from my manhood and strength. I knew I had sinned against my fellow men, but I knew, too, that there had been something good in me. I was half Irish, and about that race there is naturally something roguish; and that was part of my wickedness. When I left stir I knew I was not capable, after five years and some months of unnatural routine, of what I should have been by nature. A man is like an electric plant. Use poor fuel and you will have poor electricity. The food is bad in prison. The cells at Sing Sing are a crime against the criminal; and in these damp and narrow cells he spends, on the average, eighteen hours out of the twenty-four. In the name of humanity and science what can society expect from a man who has spent a number of years in such surroundings? He [198] will come out of stir, as a rule, a burden on the tax-payers, unable to work, and confirmed in a life of crime; desperate, and willing to take any chance. The low-down, petty, canting thief, who works all the charitable societies and will rob only those who are his benefactors, or a door-mat, is utterly useless in prison or out. The healthy, intelligent, ambitious grafter is capable of reform and usefulness, if shown the error of his ways or taken hold of before his physical and mental health is ruined by prison life. You can appeal to his manhood at that early time. After he has spent a certain number of years in stir his teeth become decayed; he can not chew his food, which is coarse and ill-cooked; his stomach gets bad: and once his stomach becomes deranged it is only a short time before his head is in a like condition. Eventually, he may be transferred to the mad-house. I left Auburn stir a happy man, for the time, for I thought everything would be smooth sailing. As a matter of fact I could not know the actual realities I had to face, inside and outside of me, and so all my good resolutions were nothing but a dream. It was a fine May morning that I left Auburn [199] and I was greatly excited and bewildered by the brightness and joy of everything about me. I took my hat off, gazed up at the clear sky, looked up and down the street and at the passers-by, with a feeling of pleasure and confusion. I turned to the man who had been released with me, and said, "Let's go and get something to eat." On the way to the restaurant, however, the jangling of the trolleys upset my nerves. I could not eat, and drank a couple of whiskies. They did not taste right. Everything seemed tame, compared with the air, which I breathed like a drunken man. I bought a few pounds of tea, canned goods, cheese and fruit, which I sent by a keeper to my friends in stir. I also bought for my friends a few dollars' worth of morphine and some pulverized gum opium. How could I send it to them, for the keeper was not "next" to the Underground? Suddenly I had an idea. I bought ten cents worth of walnuts, split them, took the meat out, put the morphine and opium in, closed them with mucilage, put them in a bag and sent them to the convicts with the basket of other things I had left with the innocent keeper. I got aboard my train, and as I pulled out [200] of the town of Auburn gave a great sigh of relief. I longed to go directly to New York, for I always did like big cities, particularly Manhattan, and I was dying to see some of my old girls. But I stopped off at Syracuse, according to promises, to deliver some messages to the relatives of convicts, and so reached New York a few hours later than my family and friends had expected. They had gone to meet an earlier train, and had not waited, so that when I reached my native city after this long absence I found nobody at the station to welcome me back. It made me sad for a moment, but when I passed out into the streets of the big town I felt excited and joyous, and so confused that I thought I knew almost everybody on the street. I nearly spoke to a stranger, a woman, thinking she was Blonde Mamie. I soon reached the Bowery and there met some of my old pals; but was much surprised to find them changed and older. For years and years a convict lives in a dream. He is isolated from the realities of the outside world. In stir he is a machine, and his mind is continually dwelling on the last time he was at liberty; he thinks of his family and friends as [201] they were then. They may have become old, sickly and wrinkled, but he does not realize this. When, set free, he tries to find them, he expects that they will be unchanged, but if he finds them at all, what a shock! An old-timer I knew, a man named Packey, who had served fifteen years out of a life sentence, and had been twice declared insane, told me that he had reached a state of mind in which he imagined himself to be still a young fellow, of the age he was when he first went to stir. [202] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2

Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.