The Autobiography of a Thief

by Hutchins Hapgood

"Why would a woman take to him (a sober, respectable man but lacking in temperament) unless she wanted a good home?"

"If there is anything detestable, it is a grafter who will steal an overcoat in the winter time."

"'Look for the woman.' A fly-cop gets many a tip from some tid-bit in whom a grafter has reposed confidence."

I did not do, as I have said, any more grafting than was necessary during these seven months of liberty; but I observed continually, living in an opium dream, and my pals were more and more amusing to me. When I thought about myself and my superior intelligence, I was sad, but I thought about myself as little as possible. I preferred to let my thoughts dwell on others, who I saw were a a fine line of cranks and rogues.

Somewhere in the eighties, before I went to stir, there was a synagogue at what is now 101 Hester Street. The synagogue was on the first floor, and on the ground floor was a gin-mill, run by an ex-Central Office man. Many pickpockets used to hang out there, and they wanted to drive the Jews out of the first floor, so that they could lay out a faro game there. So they swore and carried on most horribly on Saturdays, when the rabbi was preaching, and finally got possession of the premises. Only a block away from this old building was a famous place for dips to get "books", in the old days. Near by was Ridley's dry-goods store, in which there were some cash-girls who used to tip us off to who had the books, and were up to the graft themselves. They would yell "cash" and bump up against the sucker, while we went through him. The Jews were few in those days, and the Irish were in the majority. On the corner of Allen and Hester Streets stood the saloon of a well-known politician. Now a Jew has a shop there. Who would think that an Isaacs would supersede a Finnigan?

At the gin-mill on Hester Street, I used to know a boy dip named Buck. When I got back from my second bit I found he had developed into a box-man, and had a peculiar disposition, which exists outside, as well as inside, Graftdom. He had one thousand eight hundred dollars in the bank, and a fine red front (gold watch and chain), but he was not a good fellow. He used to invite three or four guns to have a drink, and would order Hennessy's brandy, which cost twenty cents a glass. After we had had our drinks he would search himself and only find perhaps twenty cents in his clothes. He got into me several times before I "blew". One time, after he had ordered drinks, he began the old game, said he thought he had eighteen dollars with him, and must have been touched. Then he took out his gold watch and chain and threw it on the bar. But who would take it? I went down, of course, and paid for the drinks. When we went out together, he grinned, and said to me: "I pity you. You will never have a bank account, my boy."

The next time Buck threw down his watch and said he would pay in the morning, I thought it was dirt, for I knew he had fifty dollars on him. So I said to the bartender: "Take it and hock it, and get what he owes you. This chump has been working it all up and down the line. I won't be touched by the d—— grafter any more."

Buck was ready witted and turning to the bartender, said: "My friend here is learning how to play poker and has just lost eighteen dollars. He is a dead sore loser and is rattled."

We went out with the watch, without paying for our drinks, and he said to me: "Jim, I don't believe in paying a gin-mill keeper. If the powers that be were for the people instead of for themselves they would have such drinkables free on every corner in old New York." The next time Buck asked me to have a drink I told him to go to a warm place in the next world. Buck was good to his family. He was married and had a couple of brats.

Many a man educates himself in stir, as was my case. Jimmy, whom I ran up against one day on the street, is a good example. He had squared it and is still on the level. When I saw him, after my second bit, he was making forty dollars a week as an electrical engineer; and every bit of the necessary education he got in prison. At one time he was an unusually desperate grafter; and entirely ignorant of everything, except the technique of theft. Many years ago he robbed a jewelry store and was sent to Blackwell's Island for two years. The night of the day he was released he burglarized the same store and assaulted the proprietor. He was arrested with the goods on him and brought to General Sessions before Recorder Smythe, who had sentenced him before. He got ten years at Sing Sing and Auburn, and for a while he was one of the most dangerous and desperate of convicts, and made several attempts to escape. But one day a book on electricity fell into his hands, and from that time on he was a hard student. When he was released from stir he got a job in a large electrical plant up the State, and worked for a while, when he was tipped off by a country grafter who had known him in stir. He lost his job, and went to New York, where he met me, who was home after my first term. I gave him the welcome hand, and, after he had told me his story, I said: "Well, there is plenty of money in town. Jump out with us." He grafted with me and my mob for a while, but got stuck on a Tommy, so that we could not depend on him to keep his appointments, and we dropped him. After that he did some strong arm work with a couple of gorillas and fell again for five years. When he returned from stir he got his present position as electrical engineer. He had it when I met him after my second bit and he has it to-day. I am sure he is on the level and will be so as long as he holds his job.