Detective Reardon has made a study of “Faganism” on the East Side the past few years and has been able to “run down” scores of criminals of this grade. In about two months Mr. Reardon has been able to make 178 arrests for pocket-picking, besides breaking up a score of “Fagan Schools” where boys and girls from ten to seventeen years of age were taught how to steal. Several well known thieves named Meyer Lewis, Cockeye Meyer, Joseph Monkey and Fitch who were proved to be “Fagans” were sent to jail and their business broken up.
As soon as a “Fagan” is arrested he at once offers the police a big bribe not to expose him and in some cases it is accepted with the result that Fagan still remains in business and divides the spoils with the police. This was the experience of Miss Wold and Detective Reardon who made a thorough investigation of East Side conditions several months ago.
As a rule our modern “Fagans” are very foxy. The boys and girls sent uptown to the Fifth Avenue stores and thoroughfares are well dressed while those down town are dressed like school children and frequently carry a bunch of books in their arms. The New York police will have to change their tactics entirely else they will never “run down” these criminals.
In a great city like New York we must expect such criminal combinations to defeat the ends of justice by teaching children to steal and then receive the plunder, but when such persons are caught they should get the extreme limit of the law and be shown little or no mercy. They are the worst kind of degenerates.
Recently four Central Office detectives found a “Fagan” headquarters on East Third Street in this city, run by a notorious “fence” named “Gaunt” whom they arrested with four others. The revelations came through a Tombs prisoner named Herman Doritz who made a sworn statement to the Court that he, with many others, was taught the art of thieving in Teddy Gaunt’s School of Crime. There were forty pupils in the school and after their graduation these lads were scattered over the city in large stores, where they stole thousands of dollars worth of goods besides pocket books and jewelry. As soon as the “fence” received the stolen property he took pains at once to destroy its identity. Then he sent men out to sell it at half its real value. In this way the boys said he made big money at the business.
Now, whenever the police arrest a juvenile criminal they put him through the “third degree” to see whether or not he was taught in a School of Crime. This is proper. But the cause of much of this must be laid to our high living, fevered home life, grasping after the dollar and the lack of moral training in our homes and schools.
I have no hesitation in saying that the Boys’ Prison of the Tombs is a prolific School of Crime!
What would I do about these things? Well, when love had failed I would treat the teachers and scholars of our Schools of Crime to a dose of corporal punishment. But some one says this is degrading. So it is. But what is more degrading, blighting and damning than crime! Give them their choice.