If Young had hugged the belief that he should get away with the reward, without making a division with Detectives Jim Irving and George Edsel, he soon came to a truer realization of the situation. Now, they had made the arrests, for, as I have truly told, Captain Young boldly stood in the hallway outside of Spinola’s fake brokerage office, safe from harm, while his tools did the work. Naturally they wanted a fair part of the reward, though Captain John entertained very different views on the subject. When Irving and Edsel made their demands, he firmly defined his position. After many long and heated arguments over the spoils, not unlike those occurring among crooks, Young consented to a generous division of his reward. How would the boys like five hundred each? That certainly was munificent on his part. There was more argument, in which the language used was not of the choicest, and finally George Edsel, realizing, like Bobby Bright, that it was now or never, accepted five hundred and held his peace. Not so with Jim Irving—made of sterner stuff. Besides, he was financially hungry. Not a cent would he take, and away he went, vowing he would get even with so fine a specimen of the swine as John Young.
The police at headquarters whom we regarded as our friends were known to us as the Bank Ring. This coterie of unfaithful policemen in the Detective Bureau had long hated Young because of his uncertainty in handling spoils, because he could not be depended upon to make a “divvy.” If the opportunity came along in which he could put all in his pocket, he never failed to do it. The Ring had long wanted to get rid of him. When Irving told me, with much anger, how he had been treated, steps were immediately taken to cut off Young’s police career. And when the change was made, we determined to get a “right” commander at the head of the Detective Bureau. Accordingly political and other kinds of wires soon began to hum. And Irving was instructed what his part was to be.
“Hold out for an even third of the Maryland reward,” I told him, “and don’t, for anything that is offered you, come down from that position.”
Irving couldn’t see the wisdom of this advice, but was told to go it blind and wait for the outcome. And he did. It was not for long either; within forty-eight hours Captain Young was commanded by the Police Commissioners to divide the reward equally between his associates and himself. At last the grasping one found himself confronting a strong game,—a game that was more difficult to play at successfully than had been the one he had tackled in Maryland. It was put up to him firmly by the Police Commissioners, that he must divide the seventeen thousand five hundred dollars, or hand in his shield and resign from the force.
What he did do was just like John Young—he refused to part with a cent. It was more than he would get in a year’s “rake-off” from his different mob of grafters, so he clung to the whole reward, relinquished his shield, packed his grip, and turned his back forever on 300 Mulberry Street, in the year 1869, and became plain John Young.
CHAPTER XV
MY PATENT SAFETY SWITCH AND JIM IRVING
I would not have the impression go abroad that I believed the New York Police Department, as a whole, or even its detective force, at the period of which I have written, were in league with professional criminals. Quite the reverse. Though the force had a great many patrolmen, plenty of commanding officers, and the Detective Bureau had its Bank Ring, which had for its backing high ranking officers in the department and tremendous political influences on the outside, all of whom conspired with the great and small fry thieves, nevertheless I aver that there were many, many patrolmen, commanding officers, and detectives, who ever put their honor away above dishonesty, often to their official undoing. I might mention a number of instances in which the honest policeman discovered the path of rectitude a mighty tortuous one to travel, while on the contrary the dishonest one seemed to be travelling a broad road to wealth and flowery ease. In the former case, the copper would have to patrol in the outlying districts in midwinter, with a diligent roundsman constantly on hand to see that the task was not shirked, as a penance for being honest, while the grafting copper would be detailed to some easy berth, where his time would be spent in the waiting room of a hotel or in the banking district, in which opportunities for stock speculation or connivance with thieves were thicker than London fog. One class of duty was designated “Goatville,” the other “Snap.”
It is my purpose to devote a few pages of this chronicle to the exploitation of what I am pleased to term department politics. At the period in question—when William M. Tweed bossed New York—this sort of politics was rampant in every branch of the city government, and in none was it so conspicuous as in the Police Department. From time to time it has been told how the craft of the Under World used the police to advantage in the mad rush of getting something for nothing. Whatever I have said, or whatever I shall say, may be taken as truth. Coming as it does to me after many years of divers experiences, I may depart from some of the minute truths because of a lapse of memory, but I assure my friends that the main facts are too plainly and too indelibly impressed upon me to be forgotten while I breathe. In the corrupt bargaining between the police and the crooks, whatever assistance my associates and I obtained was well paid for. If the craft did not “settle” with those who permitted them to rob and go free, it may as well be flatly stated that one of two courses was pursued. There was the choice: the penitentiary or Sing Sing prison without “squaring things,” or “settle” and walk about New York with the freedom of the honest, law-abiding citizen. But freedom was well paid for—many palms had to be “greased.”
When I came to New York, the partnership of the police with professional criminals was of the go as you please sort. The fat, thin, great, small, long, and short hand of the copper was held out from all sides,—in Mulberry Street, in the police court, on post. Everywhere protection was being paid for indiscriminately. If one copper got more from one crook than from another, it was quite likely to create jealousy, and be certain that the crook got the worst end of the argument. In this way police protection, always dearly bought, was ineffective. As a matter of fact, this state of affairs became exceedingly distasteful to the members of the Under World, and strong pulls, after several years of hardship, were sought to bring about a change. Great politicians were appealed to, and by the right kind of persuasion were forced to take a favorable view of the argument of the craft.