she had never felt till then. Under these happy conditions five years passed, and then again during the holiday season, temptation assailed her and was stronger than she. The person who discovered her theft was a detective. He did not arrest and expose her. He did worse. He followed her, obtained an interview and promised to keep her secret if she made it worth his while. She willingly gave him a sum of money, and expected to hear no more of him or of her transgression. But this newer edition of Fagin, who was as vile as the sewers, and who lied like a prospectus, dogged her movements and systematically shadowed her wherever she went, again and again demanding money and threatening her with newspaper publicity. She gave this rapacious vampire all the money she could procure, even borrowing from her father. The pawnbrokers had in safe keeping her diamonds, jewels, and some of her furs and laces. They had been pledged to furnish this licensed black-mailer with money, and still he was insatiate and unappeased. Her husband's suspicions meanwhile had been aroused. She spent so much money in occult ways that he had been impelled to ask her father what he thought L—— was doing with so much money. Fettered thus, with the torments both of Prometheus and Tantalus—the vulture gnawing at her vitals, and the lost joys mocking her out of reach—she had at last in sheer desperation been driven to request her father to procure her the assistance of a fearless lawyer.
It is not expedient to reveal the modus operandi used in emancipating this unfortunate lady from her worse than Egyptian bondage. But the reader may rest assured that through the co-operation of the police commissioners the shameless scoundrel was dismissed from the police force. Afterwards, he served a term in a Western state prison, and up to this hour has been heard no more of in New York.
[C]HAPTER VIII.
PANEL HOUSES AND PANEL THIEVES.
The Inmates—The Victims—The Gains—Complete Exposure of the Manner of Operations, and how Unsuspecting Persons are Robbed.
Some years since respectable New York was startled and horrified by the recitals of criminal life, which, in the fulfillment of a disagreeable public duty, the daily newspapers printed in their news columns. The stirring appeal for the suppression of the evil then made by the press to the moral sentiment of the community, was backed by the judiciary, by the money and influence of wealthy and patriotic citizens, by the various charitable organizations, and by the whole police force. Consequently, the foul Augean stable of vice and iniquity, for the time being, at least, was in a great degree cleansed and purified. The leaders of that foul army of vicious men and women were gradually rooted out and driven away from their noxious haunts. Some found a congenial haven in the State prison, a few reformed, and many died in want. The plague being temporarily stayed, and popular indignation a matter of record, New York, as is its invariable custom, permitted its vigilance to go quietly to sleep, with a fair prospect of it being rudely awakened to find history repeating itself. That this awakening cannot safely be much longer deferred, it is partly the mission of the present chapter to show. For it is useless to deny that we have in this city to-day, a condition of affairs very similar to that which aroused the indignation and called for the severe repressional measures of our immediate predecessors. Up-town, in many instances closely contiguous to the dwellings of people of the highest respectability, there are dens as vile and infamous as ever disgraced any civilized community. Hardly a street, however apparently exclusive and fashionable, can boast that it is free from gambling, prostitution or panel houses.
Some time since, a journalist connected with a prominent morning paper, took great pains to collect statistics concerning houses of prostitution in New York. The article in which the results of his investigation were given, estimates that over $15,000,000 was invested in that business, and that the yearly amount spent in those houses averaged over $10,000,000. In this chapter, however, the reader's attention is more particularly invited to the class of assignation and prostitution bagnios, known as panel houses.
The name "panel house" was originally derived from a false impression prevalent in the community, that the rooms occupied by the inmates were fitted with sliding panels in the walls and partitions, through and by means of which most of the robberies were committed. But, as will be seen hereafter, the term is a misnomer, so far as the fact is concerned. But they had to have some distinctive appellation, and "panel house" is a convenient generic term.
The proprietors of panel houses, in years gone by, were nearly all professional gamblers, a fact which is more or less true to-day, where the real, genuine house of that character exists, but there are hundreds of women who work the "panel game" upon their victims, who hire a simple room in some furnished-room house. If detected the entire house has conferred upon it the name of panel house, and is ever afterwards described and known as such in police and court records.
The real, Simon-pure panel thief is generally a young and pretty female, who has been initiated into the mysteries of the game by either a gambler or a lover, and of whom she is the mistress. It is the conception of a man's brain, needing the assistance of an attractive woman to carry out the scheme, and was probably originally devised by some broken-down gambler to secure enough funds wherewith to resume play. No woman would ever have dreamt of practicing such an intricate and bold robbery, for she could never have carried it out. There are many women engaged in these robberies who are neither young nor handsome, but they are adepts and make up in knowledge and experience what they lack in charms; but the most successful are young and attractive. They succeed better when they are winsome, for reasons which require no explanation.