Boy, you put down a great deal about the "Black Museum". I can't go into much of it, but I'll try go point out a few things.
Reverend Benjamin Speke disappeared in 1865 and it was what they refer to as a "nine day wonder". The blameless clergyman was the brother of the African Explorer and discoverer of Lake Victoria (he was alone, but his exploration partner James Grant was ill in a tent a few miles back), John Hanning Speke. The explorer had died in a shooting incident (some still suspect it was suicide) when he was about to appear at a debate with his former partner in an earlier expedition, the famous Richard Burton. Burton was a gifted debater (and writer) and probably would have won the debate - but we'll never know. Benjamin Speke was found at the end of nearly two weeks, working as a cattle drover on a country farm. He returned to his home, and died in 1881, possibly a suicide by drowning. What caused the disappearance was never revealed.
Reverend John Selby Watson was one of the few murderers who had his biographical entry in the original Dictionary of National Biography. He was headmaster of a small school in London, and augmented his meager earnings (which were never raised) by translations and learned books that were not big money generators. However, I can vouch that his translation of the Roman-Greek historian Polybius was included in a "Viking" paperback with three other ancient historians forty years back. His last work of scholarship, a history of the Papacy, failed like the other books did. Unfortunately he was now super-annuated, and the Board of Trustees thanked him for his services and replaced him - they did not give him any final gift or annuity. His wife had become an alcoholic, and she confronted him at home and in the course of an argument he bludgeoned her. It actually is a manslaughter, but he compounded the crime by trying to "hide" the body, behind a sofa. When he realized he could not plan a sudden clever burial or dismemberment (he never was the type) he took some poison. A servant found him and got the doctor...and the police. Nobody expected Watson to hang - it was abundantly clear that his crime was tied to cruel poverty and unfeeling employers. While on death row (he was found guilty of first degree murder) several parliamentary members in discussing the case judged the man's ability for translating Greek. The sentence was reduced to life imprisonment. He died in that accident in his cell in 1884.
Maria Clousen is the victim of a case which has annoyed Crime Historians since 1871 when it occurred: the "Eltham Case". A made in a house in Eltham, near London, she had been seeing a great deal of one Edmund Pook, whose family (a middle class one) lived in Eltham, but who (despite being a epileptic) was actually pursuing a career on the music hall circuit. One night in the fall of 1871 Maria was hurrying up with her chores when a fellow servant asked why she was in a rush. Maria explained she had a date with Edmund. She ran out and was never seen alive again (her corpse, attacked with a hatchet) was found in a nearby "lover's lane". Suspicion fell on Edmund, and he was arrested. But soon the case descended into a farce. A solicitor also named Pook (but not a relative, apparently) felt Edmund was being railroaded. This guy did everything to gather a minor dream team to defend Edmund, and to discredit anyone who testified for the prosecution. There was evidence that Edmund's movements that night were suspicious and furtive, but the defense attacked and attacked and questioned everything. Then came the testimony about what Maria had said as she was leaving to the fellow servant. The solicitor named Pook and his barrister partner insisted it was hearsay and not under any exception (it was not given to a figure who had legal right to hear and make note of it - a senior servant or somebody who had the legal obligation to protect Maria). As a result it had to be thrown out. Edmund Pook was acquitted.
There was also a criminal libel trial on the case that resulted in another victory for the Pook family and it's offspring (still using Pook the solicitor!). Then there a last trial - a civil suit that it was a mistake for the Pooks to have pursued. It seems the level of proof needed for evidence in civil suits is far more flexible than in criminal cases. This time Sergeant Ballentine, a prominent barrister of the day, was defending the defendant in the civil case, and when Edmund got on the stand forced him to make revelations he had not been forced to make in the earlier cases...statements showing he had opportunity, motive, and possibly access to the weapon. The jury voted against the Pooks in this case, and the family's reputation was finally destroyed by their over-reaching. They'd gone to the legal water trough once too many times.
Jeff
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Here's the Park Row trailer.
Here's a NY Sun article about Scotland Yard's "Black Museum" from 1888. I don't know if Arthur Brisbane (the Sun's London correspondent) wrote it or not. As a bonus, two earlier articles about the Black Museum.
New York Sun July 8, 1888 Page 5, Column 1
WONDERS OF CRIMINAL GENIUS.
Strange and Hideous Mementoes--Robbery
and Fraud--Misdirected American Ingenuity
London, June 18.--I have just been admitted
to see what must undoubtedly rank among
one of the most remarkable collections extant.
Yet it has no official name, and neither exhaustive
Murray nor plenary Baedeker describes it.
True, it has a catalogue, but there exists only
one copy of it. The trustees of this gallery
felicitously call it the Black Museum. Those
trustees are also the heads of the Detective
Department of the London Metropolitan Police.
The museum is contained in one moderate-sized
but closely packed room, situated at the
back of No. 1 Great Scotland Yard.
One of the trustees, a young detective,
patiently shows me over and congenially sets off
its unparalleled treasures. Relieved by a few
casts of celebrated assassins, by a quaint engraving
of a distinguished highwayman of the
last century whom the myrmidons of the law
surprised with two dulcineas, by an admirable
reproduction on paper of the different parts of
an itinerant jeweler's body cut some years
ago by the Prevost French, "Agent de Surete."
and by other similar works, the treasures
consist of burglars' authentic tools, murderers'
weapons, self-destroyers' historical arms,
great criminals' ghastly souvenirs, and their
Victims' ghostlier relics.
Here comes first, in a glass jar, the hand of a
woman, severed by a rough instrument from
the arm; It was found in the Thames many
years ago. Nothing else of the unfortunate
creature was ever discovered. Then follow a
host of sinister-looking razors, each with its
ugly record: a miscellany of knives, every one
of them with its bloody tragedy. Among others,
I am given to handle a forbidding curved
steel, once the pride of a jealous sailor, who
plunged it into the heart of an inconstant
sweetheart; time has not toned down the reddish
discoloration on its blade. Half
a dozen spears, originally intended
for whaling, but used against their officers by
a mutinous crew, bring to remembrance one
of the most lugubrious dramas of the sea.
Yonder is the clerical hat of the Rev. Selby
Watson, who slew his wife, Suspended against
one side of the walls are the Fenian rifles
seized at Clerkenwell about seven years ago.
These excellent weapons with fixed bayonets
are made in two separable sections to be easily
packed up and smuggled. The maker, however,
has omitted to set his trade mark upon
them, so be cannot be looked up.
Aghast at the contemplation of a store of
ugly life preservers. bludgeons, slungshots [sic],
and jimmies, many of them smeared with a
dried black substance--which is blood--it is
with relief that the horror-stricken eye rests
on an unsuspicious little vial. But the Black
Museum has no room for innocent grimcracks:
this vial contains one of the nicotine capsules
With which the notorious Dr. Lamson poisoned
the crippled brother of his beautiful wife to get
hls money. Close by are the fearful hatchet
with which Wainwright killed Harriet Lane,
and the spade which his devoted brother
used to bury her, and four unimpressive
buttons of the dress the woman wore when
assassinated, as well as some of her hair, a
piece of her skin, one of her bones, und the
pistol ball found in her brain. Similar relics
are preserved of Harriet Buswell. the victim of
the Great Coram street murder, whose authors
are still unknown and wanted. Under a glass
case are samples of the marvellous base
two-shilling pieces coined by John Holmes, alias
Sydney Allendale, one of the princes of the unofficial
minters. sentenced only last year to
twenty years' penal servitude. Everybody
banked his two-shilling pieces as the best
productions of the mint, but. strange to say,
his half-crown issues were a complete failure.
Red and black flags of Socialists, ugly
sticks, broken gas pipes, iron bars, and oyster
knives represent trophies conquered by the
police on some of the last riotous occasions. A
black object, only four or live inches long by
3 1/2 deep, apparently a most innocuous trifle, is
one of the explosive machine cases, once filled
with dynamite. found in the coal bunkers of
one of the great Atlantic liners. Other Infernal
machines, or at least supposed infernal
machines, are also represented by a child's
feeding bottle found under the seat of a London
tram car, and an ordinary canister abandoned
in 1881 opposite the Duke of Bedford's
residence in Eaton square.
The most interesting possessions of the Black
Museum are the portable properties which it
has inherited from undoubtedly one of the
greatest culprits of all times, Charles Peace,
hanged in 1879. Never did a more daring
and clever burglar and murderer exist.
The number of houses he pillaged all
over the country has never been known.
His collection of tools, which lies here
with one of his pairs of goggles and one
of his false beards, is a revelation. The
tools are mostly small, but of an everlasting
strength. Among others there is an unheard-of
pincer, with a villainous grip to seize the
heads of keys of looked-up rooms and turn
them back, which is perfect. Peace never oscillated
before a locked bedroom; he always
went straightforward for it. The wooden ladder
he used for his nocturnal expeditions is
another triumph of workmanship. Long and
strong enough to carry any man to any first-floor
window, its joints fold up so that it can be
hidden in an unassuming Gladstone bag.
Convicts' letters add the literary element to
the collection. There is a very well-written
note of Lefroy, the man who killed Mr. Gould
on the Brighton railway, to one of the London
theatrical managers, with reference to a pantomime
written by him. Another interesting
correspondence is the one left by that satanic
woman, Mrs. Waters, the baby farmer, hanged
some fifteen years ago for the murder of an
untold number of infants intrusted to her care.
These letters throw as much horrible light
on those from whom she got the illegitimate
children, and on those with whom she traded
for the adoption of these unfortunate infants,
as on herself. With her correspondence is
kept one of the feeding bottles found in her
bed. A vial of laudanum was attached to the
neck of the bottle, the poison being mixed with
the food of the children she could not get
adopted, or of those whom she knew she was
expected to kill.
A few photographs deserve also a short
notice. First the picture of a long-since dead
adventurer, who is credited, no one knows why,
with being the original oi "Jim the Penman."
Then that of W. Bouppell, the member of Parliament
sentenced to penal servitude for having
forged bis father's will, and next the portraits
of two young, well-educated scoundrels,
Boulton and Park, who with a third wretch.
Lord Clinton, scandalized London some years
ago by their adoption of female clothes and their
indecent freaks. Their case merits a special
mention, for there is no doubt that, like the
nobleman who escaped arrest about eighteen
months ago. though known as guilty of immoral
offences, Boulton. Park, und Lord Clinton
avoided the punishment they richly deserved,
owing to social Influence and interference--sad
blots on the justice of this country.
At the end of last year, in the course of an
ungentlemanly controversy, an American,
Dougherty, shot in London his friend and
countryman. Graham. The latter soon died
from his wounds. The former was sent to
penal servitude for twenty years. Those two
visitors had come to assist at the great fight
between Kilrain and Smith. They were travelling,
also, for business purposes. They were
card sharpers, and doing very well. They belonged
to the class of players and gamblers who
particularly infest the transatlantic steamers.
The uncontrollable temper of Dougherty has
enabled the Black Museum to acquire perhaps
the pearl of its collection in the shape of the
most complete and perfect equipment of a modern
card sharper, for such equipment was found
in the apartments occupied by the two American
friends and appropriated by the English
police. A summary description of it may be
useful, as it might put people on their guard.
First, there is an implement which the unscrupulous
player adjusts with a leather strap to
his left elbow, between his shirt and coat
sleeves. It is provided with nippers fixed at
the end of an elastic steel band, which expands
to the hand of the cheater by his simply resting
his arm on the table, and which folds back
to his elbow by his lifting the arm from the
table. Should this apparatus, both for supplying
and removing cards, not be sufficient in a
protracted sitting, the cheater is provided
with another ingenious plant, which works up
his leg. On his merely bending his knee a
catgut is stretched, two small pulleys begin
action, and send out from ihe foot a pair of
steel clippers to just above his belt to relieve
him of useless cards. The cards these sharpers
use are kept in beautiful mahogany cases
which habitually contain four or five packs,
separated from each other by a partition. Every
card is marked, though the uninitiated do
not see the marks, and the cheater knows
which will turn up. The mark lies either in the
printing of the design at the back, which is
more or less shifted, or in the position of a
certain flower or line on the back, The
surface of some of the cards is rubbed
with a little sandpaper to make them
adhesive, and these cards are then
put back in the case, where they are made to
stick very close together by the means of the
screw which moves the partitions. The object
of this trick is to give the sharper in dealing
the choice of two cards. Another most useful
auxiliary of the provident gambler is a diminutive
and admirably made mirror, not bigger
than a shilling, which yet will hold your countenance.
The owner fixes it on his knee und
uses it in dealing and in games where players
cannot see tbeir cards, by holding them over it.
The mechanical dealing box used at the
game of faro is no longer a security against
cheating by sleight of hand. for in Dougherty's
collection are boxes which allow two cards
instead of one to come up when the sharper
touches a mall lever, his mirror subsequently
telling him which card to use.
Young speculators and old who may read
this and say, "Well, at least we have still the
honest teetotum." may, on the strength of this
hope, expose themselves to certain bankruptcy,
for the last thing I held in my hand in the
Black Museum, though the most innocent-looking
ivory teetotum you could conceive, is
possessed of a movable pivot, and turns up
quite differenr figures according to the end on
which it is spun. This teetotum is also the
product of American genius.
----end
An article about the shooting mentioned above.
New York Sun, November 23, 1887, Page 1, Column 6
An American Shot in London
His Assailant Supposed to be a Well-Known New York Criminal
A cable despatch from London yesterday
said that Col. George M. Graham of Rochester
N. Y. was shot on Monday evening by Dan
Doherty, said to be of Now York. It is
said that on Saturday a Mr Howard won
$2,500 from Doherty in a gambling house
and took his verbal promise to pay the
debt. Doherty later concluded that he
had been cheated, and while taking supper
with Graham on Monday night he asked the
latter how he could get rid of paying the money,
which, he said, had been unfairly won from
him. Graham told him it was a debt of honor,
whereupon Doherty, who had been drinking
pulled a revolver and shot Graham in the abdomen,
inflicting a mortal wound. Doherty is
under arrest.
Inspector Byrnes said yesterday that Dan
Doherty was very likely the crook who about
1868 was sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment
in the Massachusetts State prison for a
hank robbery committed in Charlestown.
Prior to engaging in this robbery Doherty
lived in New York with a shoplifter named
Charlotte. While Doherty was in prison
Charlotte lived with a bank burglar named
Horace Hoven, alias "Little Horace." After
Doherty's fifteen years expired Charlotte and
Hoven went to England as man and wife.
Doherty followed them. Hoven was arrested
in Manchester, England recently for a bank
burglary and sent to prison for a long term.
Doherty is remembered here as a dangerous
man who would shoot on slight provocation.
---end
Trial transcript from the Old Bailey Online:
DANIEL FRANCIS DOHERTY, Killing > murder, 12th December 1887.
Reference Number: t18871212-149
Offence: Killing > murder
Verdict: Guilty > no_subcategory
Punishment: Imprisonment > penal servitude
The Spectator, Volume 50, October 6, 1877, Pages 1235-1237
THE BLACK MUSEUM.
Take care how you step," says a courteous official, who has preceded the visitor up a staircase in one of the houses in Scotland Yard, and opened a door on an upper floor; "we are obliged to throw a great deal of this about." The substance in question is a disinfecting powder, inimical to "the moth;" the room is a large, bare-floored apartment, with barred windows, fitted up with wide shelves, which are divided into square compartments; tho centre is occupied by a shelved stand, also divided into compartments, and their contents are liberally sprinkled with the all-pervading powder. The room is that in which the articles of property taken from convicts about to undergo their sentences are stowed away until they are reclaimed by their owners; the stand in the centre is a receptacle for objects of the "unlawful-possession" class, to which a large room upstairs is also devoted. Overhead is the "Black Museum," in which, during the last three years, pieces de conviction, which until then had been kept indiscriminately with the other property of criminals, have been arranged and labelled, forming a ghastly, squalid, and suggestive show. On entering the lower room, the visitor is struck by its odd resemblance to a seed-shop. Hundreds of hooks stud the rims of the shelves and the sides of the compartments, and from them are suspended hundreds of little packets, neatly made up in brown paper, tied with white twine, and severally distinguished by large parchment labels, each bearing a neat inscription. The packets contain small articles taken from the prisoners, who in due course, after they are discharged from prison, will be brought to Scotland Yard, will have their portraits taken (by force, should they object to that process); the larger things are deposited in the compartments of the shelves, and every item, no matter how insignificant, is entered in the proper registers. A motley collection are the larger articles, with a preponderance among them of grimy pocketbooks and greasy purses,—-one trim and pretty hand-basket strikes the visitor's eye,—-but there are valuable things in some of those parcels; and downstairs, in the officials' room, is a massive iron safe, fitted with sliding shelves, in which is kept a large collection of watches, rings, chains, pins, scent-bottles, pencil-cases, and other jewellery, which are either the lawful property of prisoners, or have been found in their unlawful possession and confiscated, but for whom no owners have been discovered. Among tho watches are some beautiful specimens, one in particular, taken from a costermongcr, and of exquisite workmanship and ornamentation, is valued at fifty pounds.
The Prisoners' Property room is scrupulously clean and tidy, but the look of it is forlorn and squalid, the powder lies thick on everything, and the scent of moth and rot is in the air. Great bales of cloth and woollen stuff occupy the shelves of the central stand; they are shaken, and beaten, and turned, but all to no avail; the moth and the rot have got them, while the prison has got the former unlawful possessors of them, and the unwholesome weirdness peculiar to once worn, but long unused garments is upon the articles of wearing apparel which are hung or folded up in the room. This impression comes more strongly upon the visitor when he goes up higher still, into the topmost apartment, where heaps of clothing hang against the walls, some new, some worn. A girl's white fur jacket behind the door is a mere nursery for moths, a bunch of new boots of several sizes dangling from a peg at the end of a long string is all speckled with a measly mildew; the heaps of shawls have a draggled and furtive look, and some childreu's clothing has a touch of its inseparable prettiness, even here Old books, a picture or two, some worthless table ornaments, innumerable articles, which could not be described or classed except as odds and ends, form a portion of this collection, which goes on accumulating, and which has no ultimate destination. "What is to become of all this?" asks the visitor, and is answered, to his surprise, that nobody knows; that the things are nobody's property, and nobody has the power to do anything with them,—-a piece of information which makes them more ghastly and nightmarelike to the imagination than before. An ever-growiDg dust-heap, formed of thieves' clothing and unlawful possessions, with nobody to cart it away, to distribute it, or bury it out of sight for evermore; an accumulating banquet always spread for the moth, the rust, and the rot,—-the contents of those rooms are far from pleasant to think of. It seems supremely ridiculous, but it is a fact that nothing short of a legislative measure could rid the premises of these rotting garments out of whose every fold one might shake, with the dust, an image of squalor, crime, and punishment.
Outside the door of the Black Museum is a shelf, in the wall of the landing-place. The visitor passing it is aware of a huddled heap of dirty coats, a serge gown, and a coarse kind of rug, the skin of an animal, with the red and white hair on. Under the shelf, on the floor, lies some rough packing-cloth. He passes the heap carelessly—-there's a little can full of a disinfecting fluid on the same shelf—-and enters the Museum. What are his first impressions of it? They are various,—-that it is like a bit out of a gamekeeper's room, with a bigger bit out of a smith's forge, a touch of a carpenter's workshop, a broad suggestion of a harness-room, something of the marine-store complexion (and a good deal of its odour), a hint of the open-air stall in front of a pawn-shop in a very small way of business indeed, a little of the barrack-room gun-rack, with no "bright barrels" enforced; a general air of lumber-room, with just a dash of anatomical museum, but above all, and increasing with every moment's prolonged observation, a likeness to the cutlery booth in a foreign fair, with all the knives symmetrically displayed, but unaccountably rusty and dim-bladed, as if the booth had been shut up for half a century, and the salesman and his customers were all ghosts.
Opposite the door, and on the face of the wall to the right, are the objects, displayed on a wooden shelf with iron legs, which convey to the visitor a hint of the open-air stall in front of a pawn-shop in a very small way of business indeed. A common little looking-glass in a wooden frame, with a foot to it, four black glass buttons, two wisps of rope, a pair of trumpery earrings in a cardboard box, two bullets, a pipe, a cluster of soft, now dull, light brown hair, wound round a pad, a comb, a pocket-knife, and a little wooden stand covered with glass, are among the most noticeable articles. On the shelf to the right are a dirty Prayer-book, a pocket dictionary, a pair of boots, a gaudy bag worked in beads, and the crushed remains of a woman's bonnet, made of the commonest black lace, and flattened into shapelessness. In both these instances the other impressions of the place come in too, for over the shelf fronting the door hang workmen's tools, hammer, and cleaver, and spade, and beside that on the right, is just such a bundle as adorns the walls of the Marine Store; it consists of a gown and petticoat, of cheap, poor stuff, bearing dreadful, dim stains, and a battered crinoline. The visitor is in presence of the mean objects which perpetuate here the memory of two peculiarly horrible crimes. The soft brown hair is that of Harriet Lane, the buttons and the earrings are those which were found in the earth where her body had been buried, the bullets were taken out of her skull, tho object under the glass-case is the sacred piece of her skin which completed the identification of the body; the wisps of rope dragged her out of the earth under the warehouse, the cleaver, the hammer, and the spade are the implements with which the horrible deed which led to the murderer's detection were done. The knife was Thomas Wainwright's, the pipe was Henry's, and when the visitor is leaving the museum he will be shown, in the pack-cloth on the floor under the shelf outside the door, the wrapper in which the dismembered body was packed; and in one of the dirty coats,—-a horrid thing, with its hideous rents and smears,—-Wainwright's vesture on the occasion. The coat of the captain of the ' Lennie,' with the gash in the cloth torn by the knife of his murderer, and eaten through and through with moth and rot, is not nearly so disgusting an object; and as for the serge robe of that poor rogue, "Professor Zendavesta," and the hide cloak of the confiscated "anatomical" wax African, who grins awfully in one corner of the museum, a real skeleton hand and arm considerately hidden behind him, they are quite cheerful to look at in comparison. The Prayer-book and the other pitiful objects upon the shelf to the right were found on the body of Maria Clousen, the blood-and-mud-stained clothes were hers, and they contrast with grim irony, as evidences of an unpunished crime, with the adjoining objects, which tell of one brother hanged and the other in penal servitude.
Along the wall on the right side of the room is ranged a choice collection of guns, crowbars, and "jemmies "—-the latter are implements of the housebreaking industry, which admit of great variety, and are susceptible of highly artistic handling—-and among them is a pair of tongs, unevenly rusted, and with a dirty paper-book, written all over with incoherent sentences, attached to it. The tongs are those with which a man named Macdonald killed his wife about two years ago; the book is, it seems to the visitor, a record of the various phases of the man's insanity. They hanged him, though, and also the greater number of the proprietors of the horrid, labelled assortment of hammers, knives—including the bread, carving, and pocket varieties--razors, and pistols, which suggest a cutler's booth in a fair. There is dried blood on all the knives and razors, and on some of the hammers, and every one of them stands for a murder or a suicide; in a terrible number of cases, for the murder of a wife by her husband. Several of the pistols, mostly beautiful weapons, are the instruments of suicide, and each is labelled with the name, date, and place. The simple suicides are almost all among the higher classes of society, and when the visitor asks how the pistol with which a gentleman of wealth and station shot himself has come into the keeping of the Museum, he is told :—-" The family mostly do not like to have it, and so they ask the police to take it away." In a corner hang the clothes of the Rev. J. Watson, who murdered his wife at Stockwell; the horse-pistol with which he shot her, and the heavy hammer which he bought to knock the nails into the chest in which he proposed to hide her body. So carefully had the murderer washed his trousers and his coat-sleeves, that the blood-stains could only be discerned with difficulty at the time of the investigation. But since the coat and trousers have been hanging on the Black Museum's walls, the stains have come out close and thick. "We many times notice that here," the visitor is told. The frightful weapons used by the 'Lennie' mutineers are here, neatly ranged under the photograph of the ringleader, "French Peter," and a "group" of the whole gang of ruffians, with a red-ink mark on four heads among the number, to indicate those who were hanged. Hard by is a bundle of letters, forming the correspondence which furnished much of the evidence against Margaret Waters, the baby-farmer. How much sin, shame, sorrow, and cruelty that small dusty bundle represents! A small billycock hat, with a mask fastened inside the front rim, into which is packed a purse, a comforter, a small lantern, and a life-preserver, with a terrific knob of lead on it, is quite a cheerful object to turn to from all these grim relics of worse crimes, though the burglar who formerly owned the life-preserver informed the police who seized, but also rescued him, having come up on hearing his cries when be was caught between the iron bars of a window through which he was escaping, on a false alarm, that he had thoroughly intended to "do for" any one who should interrupt him, with that convenient weapon. A bundle of flash notes, Bank of Elegance issue, for which there is a fixed price, and a brisk sale on race-courses among bettors who can only read imperfectly or not at all; the conjuring-book of Professor Zendavesta, which always opened at the same page, the only one on which there is a worked horoscope; the wretched cheat's ill-spelled accounts, which reveal the stupendous credulity of the people, for they record an average of five hundred visitors a week; and the letters addressed to him, chiefly by women, at least sufficiently educated to know better;—-these are almost amusing, after all that has been seen before. A forged betting ticket, which got the forger into trouble at the Nottingham races, is a curious and ingenious example of perverted cleverness. The forged ticket is identical with the real one, to all appearance. On very close inspection, one sees that it is better printed than the genuine article. A large assortment of burglars' tools is not the least suggestive object here. The weapons of the thieves' war upon society are models of good workmanship, and of the adaptation of means to ends. When the neatest "centre-bit" of the carpenter's shop is compared with the deft, swift, noiselessly-working implement which goes into an iron shutter as a cheesemonger's scoop goes into a "freah Dutch;" when one looks at tho wedges of finely-tempered steel, working between zinc side-bites; at the two homemade dark lanterns, contrived with extraordinary cleverness out of a mustard-tin and a metal match-box respectively; at the rope-ladder; the "beautiful little jemmy," in a carefully-buttoned red flannel case,—-this small, powerful tool is made of a piece of a driving-wheel belonging to the finest machinery, and the metal was, of course, stolen to make it—-at the bright, slender skeleton keys; at the footpads, which are enough to make one start at every creak of one's boards and stairs, however slight; at the safe-breaking tools, which make one think there's nothing like the old stocking in the thatch, after all,—-one is amazed at and sorry for the misused cleverness and perverted inventiveness to which these things testify. Among the skeleton keys is one delicate little contrivance, which at a first glance one might take for an ornament for a lady's chatelaine. It is in reality a double instrument for picking latch-keyholes,—-one part forming the key, and the other lifting the spring. This pretty trifle was made from the brass clasp of a purse, and used with such success by the inventor that in a short time he found hinieelf in prison. While one is actually inside the Black Museum, one cannot feel amused at anything; but by the time one has turned into the Strand, the impression of the dreary reliquary of crime has so far passed away, that one can smile at the story told of the impudent simplicity of this poor, clever thief. "When be was discharged from prison," said the curator of the Black Museum, as he restored the delicate, dangling little bit of villany to its place, " the man came here, and asked us to let him have it back!"
----end
Chambers's Journal, April 25, 1885, Pages 264-267
The Black Museum
The name at the head of this paper will be a puzzle to a good many of our readers. Even among Londoners born and bred, not one in a hundred perhaps has heard of the Black Museum. Whitaker’s Almanac knows it not; and Dickens’s Dictionary of London, that ‘guide, philosopher, and friend’ of the wanderer in the great metropolis, makes no mention of it. Mr Samuel Weller himself, ‘extensive and peculiar’ as his knowledge of London is admitted to have been, might have had to plead guilty of ignorance in this one particular. And yet the Black Museum can show names of mark in its visitors’ book. ‘Counts a many, and dukes a few,’ from Royal Highnesses downwards, have here inscribed their signatures. Literature and music are represented by Mr W. S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan; the drama by Miss Minnie Palmer; the fire brigade by Captain Shaw; and the last offices of the law by Mr William Marwood, who, we are told, was a frequent visitor. Not to keep the reader in suspense, the Black Museum is a small back-room on the second floor of the offices of the Convict Supervision Department, Scotland Yard, and its curios consist exclusively of articles connected in one way or another With crime and criminals. The objects exhibited are about a hundred and fifty in number. They are carefully labelled, and are further described in a bulky catalogue, which, in addition to names, dates, and other particulars, contains a number of photographs and newspaper cuttings having relation to the various items.
The collection is so arranged as to allow free inspection of the various objects, and the curator, Sergeant Bradshaw, takes an evident pride in his charge, and furnishes the history of any given item with remarkable promptitude and accuracy. Round three sides of the room, on a high shelf, are ranged a number of plaster casts from Derby jail and York Castle, representing the heads of sundry criminals, who, for one offence or another, have suffered the last penalty of the law. If it were customary to hang people on the strength of their personal appearance, we should say that most of these gentry fully deserved their fate. They are not a pleasant sight, and for the most part have not even notoriety to recommend them. One of them, however, a big heavy head, ticketed as that of ‘John Platts’—-executed in 1847, for the murder of one George Collis, at Chesterfield—-acquires a factitious interest from the fact that the identical rope which hanged the original is looped over the gas pendant in the centre of the room. The halters connected with the other casts are also preserved in the Museum, but this one chances to have the place of honour. The curator calls our attention to the thinness of the rope—-about five-eighths of an inch only—-in comparison with that at present used, which is nearly or quite an inch in diameter. He further points out that the rope is much shorter than that now in use. Under the old regime, it was an even chance whether the criminal died by strangling or by dislocation of the neck; whereas, by the present more merciful ‘long drop,’ the neck is invariably dislocated, and death is practically instantaneous. Together with the halter are seen the cords——now replaced by a leather strap—-for pinioning the arms of the condemned man, and the cap—-a tall conical affair like a large cotton nightcap, but of double material—-for drawing over his head at the supreme moment. These three items, the halter, the pinioning gear, and the cap, constitute the complete ‘hangman’s kit.’ Sergeant Bradshaw informs us, not without a touch of regret, that Mr Marwood, on paying his last visit to the Museum, promised to present to it the rope with which the murderers of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr Burke were executed, but died without having redeemed his promise.
From the appliances of the hangman, we pass by an easy transition to the last relics of the late Mr Charles Peace, which rank among the chief lions of the collection. Sergeant Bradshaw shows us, handling them ‘tenderly, as if he loved them,’ the working tools of the venerable miscreant: the neat little picklocks and skeleton-keys; the gimlet, muffled in an india-rubber casing; the handy little ‘jemmy;’ the crucible for melting down his spoils; and last, but not least, his ‘ladder,’ a simple wooden contrivance, folding into so small a compass as to go into an ordinary handbag, and yet, when extended, affording ample foothold for the cat-like ‘prince of burglars,' as he is called, to climb up to a first-floor window. So original is the contrivance, that until Peace himself revealed its object, the police were quite at a loss to imagine its use. Here, too, are the inventor’s blue spectacles, and his artificial arm—-a leather stump with a hook in it—-worn for the purpose of disguise, the real arm lying snugly within the coat. The secret of Peace having so long kept out of the hands of the police is that he had no accomplices, but worked entirely alone. Under cover of his disguise, he collected the necessary information for his exploits; and after some daring burglary, wherein the activity of a practised gymnast had been displayed, the last person to be suspected was the little one-armed old man with the blue spectacles. Wonderful are the ways of hero-worshippers. Some eccentric relic-hunter has actually cut a piece out of the artificial arm, and in some obscure corner of the universe doubtless dazzles his kinsfolk and acquaintances by the exhibition of a veritable bit of leather formerly belonging to a deceased burglar and murderer. The reader may remember that Peace, after having escaped the consequences of many previous crimes, was convicted of attempting the life of a policeman, and of the actual murder of a Mr Dyson, at Bannercross, near Sheffield; and after a determined attempt to escape by jumping from a railway train, was executed at Leeds on the 25th of February 1879. A carte-de-visite of Peace, taken by the Stereoscopic Company, is preserved in the catalogue, and should be a valuable example to the student of physiognomy; the high forehead, deep-set eyes, and bulldog lower Jaw indicating a singular combination—-fully verified in the life of the man—-of strong intellectual power and force of will, unbalanced by corresponding moral qualities.
From the Peace collection we pass to the stock-in-trade of less notorious burglars. Here is a miniature dark-lantern, manufactured by some ingenious scoundrel out of one of Bryant and May’s three-penny tin match-boxes. ‘To such base uses may we come at last!’ The bull's-eye is a mere bit of window-glass, oval in shape, and so small that the operator can, when necessary, mask it with his thumb, no slide being used. The light~giving power of such a lantern must naturally be small, but it is probably quite sufficient to enable the burglar to avoid stumbling over tables and chairs, or to illuminate a key-hole.
Here are the working tools of Wright and Wheatley, the Hoxton burglars, now undergoing penal servitude—-Wright being condemned for ife, Wheatley to twenty years. Each carried a revolver; that belonging to Wright, with which he shot at and wounded two of the police, being stamped ‘British Constabulary,’ a queer illustration of the irony of fate, and of the proverbial ‘engineer hoist with his own petard.’ Each of these two practitioners carried his tools in a sort of haversack slung at his side. A later expert, captured in the act of an attempted burglary at the British Museum in 1884, took a bolder course, and carried his implements—-also here preserved—-in an ordinary carpenter’s tool-basket, over his shoulder. This gentleman affected the early morning for his exploits, and unless caught in the very act, would naturally be taken for a harmless British workman, going about his lawful avocations.
As might perhaps be anticipated, we find here an ample collection of crowbars or ‘jemmies’ of various descriptions. These formidable appliances are made, it appears, in regular gradations of size, the three largest being known as the ‘Lord Mayor,’ the ‘Alderman,’ and the ‘Common-councilman. The Lord Mayor is four feet three inches in length, and is only used on great occasions, say the breaking open of a strong-room or very heavy safe. The specimen here shown was used in what is known as the Hatton Garden burglary in 1880, by Smith and others. The Alderman is three feet three inches in length; the Common-councilman about two inches shorter, and, as befits its lower dignity, not quite so stout. whatever may be said as to the projected reform of the City of London, our readers will agree With us that the sooner this corporation is abolished the better. Passing downward from the Common-councilman, we come ultimately to the ‘pocket’ Jemmy—-James the less, in more respectful language—-which is about twelve inches in length. The Black Museum specimen is of finely tempered steel, and hinged so as to fold in half, in which condition a curate might carry it In his breast-pocket without exciting suspicion. The larger sizes divide into two or three lengths, which are screwed together when required for actual use. Some are solid, some of tubular steel, the latter construction giving increased lightness without any sacrifice of strength. Each end terminetes in a chisel point, the one straight, the other slightly bent. In close continuity to the crowbars we are shown specimens of the ‘knuckleduster,’ a small but formidable weapon, for which we are indebted to our American cousins. The ordinary knuckle-duster is a flat piece of iron or brass about half an inch thick, with four oval openings of such size as to allow the passage of the four fingers. The fingers being passed through these holes, the hand closes with a firm grip on the ‘butt’ of the weapon, while the remainder of the metal stands out in the shape of an iron ring or guard over each knuckle, a blow from the hand thus armed coming with terrific force. Still more formidable is the ‘spiked’ knuckle-duster. Here each loop of the projecting guard over the knuckles, instead of being rounded, as in the former case, is fashioned into an angle of about ninety degrees, giving a cutting effect in addition to the natural force of the blow.
Passing on from the knuckle-dusters, we give a cursory glance at a varied collection of life-preservers, pistols, daggers, and other lethal weapons, all of which have seen service at some time or other. The butcher’s knife, we note, is a decidedly popular weapon. There are also some half-dozen razors, all of which have been used in the commission of murders or attempted murders. It is a curious fact that they are without exception black-handled, the innocent whiteness of bone or ivory being apparently uncongenial to the murderous instinct.
Our attention is next directed to sundry tin canisters, which prove to be infernal machines. As a rule, they look harmless enough, one of them even assuming the innocent semblance of an ordinary lump of coal. The imitation is so good that it is only on taking it in the hand that we discover that the supposed coal is in reality metal, hollow, but of great weight and substance. This singular article was brought to the police by one Fraser Palmer, otherwise Farrell, otherwise ‘Warhawk,’ a man who had a mania for warning our own and foreign governments of plots which in reality had no existence save in his own imagination. He asserted that this supposed piece of coal, with others of the same kind, was intended to be charged with explosives, and mixed with the genuine coal in the bunkers of some doomed steamship. It is said that, in consequence of his revelations, an examination was made of the whole of the coal in the bunkers of the late Czar’s steam-yacht Livadia, then lying at Glasgow, but without result. Side by side with this last item is a far more formidable-looking affair. It is of small size; but the solidity of its construction and the peculiarity of its shape—-a flattened oval, tapering down at the extremity, where the fuse is inserted—-indicate that special thought and ingenuity have been expended on its design. Even the most accomplished of criminals, however, cannot be always on his guard, and this deadly contrivance was inadvertently left in a tramcar. The conductor was persuaded that his ‘find’ was an infernal machine of more than ordinarily diabolical character, and he conveyed it with infinite precaution to the police, who at first were of the same opinion. Further investigation, however, satisfied them that the supposed explosive was merely a model, artistically cast in lead, of a new design for an infant's feeding--bottle!
A more serious interest attaches to the truncheon-case—-pierced with a bullet—-of the unfortunate policeman Cole, shot at Dalston in 1882 by the cowardly ruffisn Orrock, in an attempted burglary at a Baptist chapel. Orrock’s soft felt hat, found on the scene of the murder, is also here preserved, as also the chisel, with the letters ‘rock’ scratched upon it, which led to his identification. A photograph of the chisel is also shown; and it is a curious illustration of the detective powers of science that the mark, which on the chisel itself is imperceptible to ordinary eyesight, is plainly legible in the photograph.
Among the cartes-de-visite which adorn the Museum catalogue is that of O’Donnell, the man who shot the informer Carey. Here, too, are the two bullets which were extracted from Carey’s body, and the revolver, a small pocket weapon, from which they were fired. A larger revolver, found among O‘Donnell's luggge, lies beside it. Under a glass shade hard by lies a gelatine capsule, a harmless-looking affair enough, but belying its appearance, for it contains a deadly poison, aconite—-being, in fact, the fellow to that used by Dr Lamson in 1882 to destroy his youthful brother-in-law. We are shown the carte of this criminal also, a gentlemanly-looking man, by no means answering to the conventional type of assassin. Appearances, however, are deceitful, as the copybooks of our youth so persistently reminded us. Under another glass shade is a piece of dark-brown leather, which proves to be a portion of the tanned skin of Bellingham, the murderer of Mr Perceval. Side by side with this is a curiosity of a. different kind, a pin-cushion, skilfully worked in human hair, with the inscription, ‘I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way thou shalt go. I will guide thee with mine eye.’ Here, apparently, the worker’s stock of scriptural quotation failed, for she continues, ‘My home is in heaven.’ It is painful to have to relate that the good lady who worked these pious sentiments has been over three hundred times convicted of drunkenness and disorderly conduct! She presented this pin-cushion—-in honour, we presume, of old acquaintance—-to the Rev. Mr Horsley, chaplain of the House of Detention, who in turn presented it to the Black Museum.
A tall hat on a peg and much covered with dust, next attracts our attention. This homely relic was the property of the Rev. Mr Speke, the eccentric clergyman who suddenly disappeared, leaving his head gear—-here present-—in the Green Park, and was believed to have been murdered, but was subsequently discovered, in the garb of a labouring-man, at Padstow in Cornwall. He ultimately died, we believe, in a lunatic asylum. Close beside Mr Speke’s hat hang a coil of rope, a pair of boots, and an old horse-pistol. These articles were the property of another clerical gentleman, the Rev. John Selby Watson, an eminent scholar, of St Michael’s Road, Stockwell. He was convicted, in January 1872, of the murder of his wife, whose body he had inclosed in a packing-case, corded with the piece of rope here shown. He was, however, respited on the ground of insanity, and thenceforth kept in confinement. He died quite recently, at Parkhnrst Prison in the Isle of Vight, falling out of his bunk in a fit and fracturing his skull.
Not far distant are mementos of other well-known murderers. Here is the portrait, cut from the Daily Telegraph, of Lefroy, the murderer of Mr Gold on the Brighton Railway. Here is the rope used by Marguerite Dixblanc to strangle her mistress, Madame Riel, in Park Lane. Here are the boots of the unfortunate girl, Maria Clausen, murdered at Kidbrooke Lane, Eltham, and the plasterer’s hammer which did the deadly deed. With another plasterer's hammer, also here preserved, Mullins murdered Mrs Emsley at Stepney, in 1860. Here, too, are sundry memorials of the Wainwright case, or Whitechapel murder, of 1874. Here are the chopper with which the unfortunate Harriet Lane was dismembered, and the spade which dug her grave. Here is one of the buttons cut from her dress, and a corresponding button found with her body; and—-stranger item still—-the piece of shinbone taken by a surgeon from the leg of the living Harriet Lane, and which formed a last unmistakable proof of the identity of the nameless corpse. Even the cigar which Henry Wainwright was smoking when arrested, is here preserved.
Turning to offenders of a more frivolous character, we have the peepshow apparatus wherein a pretended astrologer, calling himself Professor Zendavesta, and residing in Homer Street, Marylebone Road, London, was wont, ‘for a consideration,’ to call up the image of an inquirer’s future wife or husband. To illustrate the audacity of the Professor and the fatuity of his dupes, we may mention that among his pictorial collection of promised husbands were found Mr Holman Hunt and Mr Henry Neville. Another branch of the Professor’s business was the casting of nativities; and a number of his hand-bills, showing the great advantages to be derived from possessing the ‘straight tip’ in this particular, are preserved with the peepshow apparatus. Next to this latter is a circular board with a number of shallow cups or depressions, painted of different colours, but higgledy-piggledy, like a solitaire board ‘gone wrong.’ This is an appliance for public-house gambling. A marble being dropped into a cylindrical arrangement at the side, is allowed to wander at will over the board, bets being made as to the particular colour in which it will finally settle. Not far distant is a bundle of ‘flash’ notes, used by sharpers to simulate unbounded wealth, for the purpose of the ‘confidence trick’ and similar frauds. ‘Flash’ differ from ‘forgcd’ notes, the latter being intended to be actually passed as money, and consequently made as like the real thing as possible. The flash note is a very rough affair, and only aims at simulating the general appearance of a genuine note. The specimens before us are headed ‘Bank of Engraving,' and run: ‘I promise to engrave and print in letter-press on demand for the sum of ten pounds, in the first style of the art, or forfeit the above sum. London, 29 April 1840. For Self and Co., Bank of Engraving. J. DUCK.' There is the customary 'Ten' in large Gothic letters in the left-hand corner; and the paper and printing of a genuine note are imitated with sufficient closeness to deceive an unwary observer who merely sees the note in the hands of another person.
Among curiosities of a different kind is an Egyptian courbash, or bastinado, an article having the appearance of an ordinary walking-cane, tapering considerably. It is said to be of rhinoceros’ hide. Whatever the material, it is of great weight and flexibility; and when applied, after the mild Oriental fashion, to the soles of the victim’s feet, must be extremely persuasive. The specimen before us had the honour of being exhibited during a recent debate in the House of Commons. Hard by it is an ancient watchman’s rattle, with which an expert performer, if allowed full opportunity to use it, could make a noise audible at nearly two hundred yards’ distance. As a matter of fact, however, it was chiefly used to batter the head of the watchman himself, for which purpose it was greatly approved by the malefactors of the period. A similar appliance, in an improved form, was used by the police up to a recent date; but is now happily superseded by a powerful whistle, which leaves the wearer full use of his hands for attack or defence, and can be heard for nearly three-quarters of a mile. Here, also, are handcufi's of various dates and construction, including the pair in which the notorious Jerry Abershaw, the highwayman, was hanged in chains (1795) on Wimbledon Common; and an ingenious wristlet, of Yankee contrivance, for securing an offender on his way to durance vile. It is not unlike a. pair of caliper-compasses, but with a crosshandle, like that of a corkscrew. The compass portion being slipped over the wrist of the criminal, closes with a spring; and the handle being grasped firmly by the officer in charge, the captive has small chance of freeing himself, for a broken wrist would be the probable consequence of a struggle. Apropos of this useful appliance, Sergeant Bradshaw favours us with a ittle piece of professional advice, which will appropriately conclude our paper. ‘Always grip your man,’ he tells us, ‘on his right side. Then, if he shows fight, he can only let you have it with his left, and you have your right hand free to tackle him. If you grip him on his left side, you leave him the use of his right hand to your left, and like enough he’ll get the better of you.’
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The reference to "Comstock" made by Tom Brodie in the article of Nov. 27, 1886 is to the "Crusader Against Vice" (usually of sexual nature) Anthony Comstock. Comstock also went against gambling establishments (of which many existed in Manhattan in the 1880s and 1890s), and against patent medicines (probably his best work for public good). You will note all the printers involved in these illegal card games. Park Row was the newspaper center of New York City in that period. In fact, there was a Samuel Fuller movie in the 1950s called "Park Row" about the newsmen of the 1880s.Originally posted by TradeName View Post
JeffLeave a comment:
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Before Steve Brodie's alleged jump from the Brooklyn Bridge, a gambler shot at him in an area near the bridge.
New York Sun, May 17, 1886, Page 2, Column 6
STEVE BRODIE SHOT AT
The Bullet Hit the Brooklyn Bridge--Brodie and the Other Man Locked Up
Steve Brodie, the "newsboy," who acquired
a reputation as a pedestrian some years
ago, and has latterly been employed in the
Temple Court, at Beckman and Nassau streets,
was shot at last night by George Floyd, a young
printer.
The men have been on unfriendly terms for
some time past, and soon after Brodie took an
interest in Soto's filibustering expedition to
Honduras the old grudge became more intense.
The trouble between them seems to have originated
in jealousy of some kind.
About 8 o'clock last evening they met at
Chatham and Chambers streets, and, after an
interchange of abuse, Brodie shot out his right,
which landed on his adversary's nose and drew
blood. Fioyd attempted to counter, but Brodie
parried his blows, and Floyd set about looking
after his injured nose. Brodle walked off in
triumph.
As he reached the south roadway of the
bridge Floyd approached him with a pistol of
not very formidable size in his hand and, pointing
it at at [sic] Brodie, pulled the trigger. The
bullet passed harmlessly by Brodie, came very
near hitting Bridge Policeman Dixon, and
spent itself against the masonry of the bridge.
Brodie was about to retaliate with his fist
when both men were arrested by Policeman
Corbin. They were locked up in the Oak street
station--Floyd on a charge of felonious assault,
and Brody for simple assault
---end
New York Sun, November 27, 1886, Page 4, Column 1
Steve's brother Tom Shot
Spending Part of Thanksgiving Night about Town with a Bullet in His Neck
Tom Brodie, Steve's brother, is in the
Chambers Street Hospital with a bullet in his
neck. Tom is 24 years of age and claims to be
a printer. He was one ot the filibusters who
sailed away last winter to subdue Guatemala
and landed on Turks Island. When he returned
he posed as a "travelled" man, and got
along after a fashion until he abused his
mother so that she could stand It no longer,
and he was sent to Blackwell's Island by Justice
Duffy. He was there when Steve dropped
from the bridge, and the fame of this feat
reached him. It made him restless, and on
that very night he and a companion eluded the
guard and started to swim to this city.
They were about half way across when
they were seen and fired at. They
reached Oak Point after being in the
Water nearly five hours. Steve Brodie
employed Tom as a valet when he was exhibiting
himself in a dime museum. When Steve
started off on a starring tour Tom was thrown
on his own resources. On Thanksgiving morning
Tom started out to spend the day as pleasantly
as he could with his friends. In the evening
he appeared in Varain's saloon in Park
row. He was penniless, but this didn't prevent
him calling for a drink. The drink was not
given to him, and Tom stole a bottle of whiskey
and disappeared. A little room on the third
floor at B3 Park row is fitted up as a club room.
It is frequented mostly by printers and Brodie
thought he had a right there. The police say
Brodie had a number of tough young men with
him, and that his object in entering the club
room was to clean it out in order to satisfy an
old grudge that he had against a printer named
Wm. Floyd, who fired a shot at his brother
Steve some months ago. A number of men sat
around a red cloth covered table playing
cards. The police say Brodie wanted to
sell the stolen bottle of whiskey to
Floyd, and when the latter refused to buy
it he asked Floyd to loan him fifty cents.
Floyd replied that he was always willing to
loan a decent man money. Brodie, it is said,
took offence at this remark and made a dash at
fioyd with a knife. Floyd pulled a revolver
from his pocket and fired a shot at Brodie. The
men in the room cleared out, and an hour
later Brodie walked into the Chambers Street
Hospital. The revolver had evidently been
held close to his face for the skin was blackened
with powder. The ball lodged In the muscles
of his neck, and inflicted a painful wound.
Frank Nelson, a printer who saw the shooting,
corroborates the story told by the police.
The door of the club room was fastened with a
big padlock yesterday.
Tom Brodie said that he was sitting quietly
watching a game of poker, and that he was
shot because he said that if Comstock learned
that poker was played there he would "pull"
the place.
Detectives Shalney and Carr of the Oak street
station are looking for Floyd.
----end
New York Sun, December 4, 1886, Page 1 , Column 6
Brodie Lets Floyd Off
George Floyd who shot Tom Brodie at 83
Park row a week ago was discharged at the Tombs
Court yesterday. Brodie recovered rapidly from the
wound made in his neck by the bullet, and was discharged
from the hospital last Wednesday.
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New-York Tribune, December 26, 1886, Page 3, Column 4
Printers Arrested for Gambling
The Tombs Police Court on Christmas morning was full
of printers from the newspaper offices, in consequence of
a raid on a gambling house at No. 83 Park Row, kept by
George Floyd. The complainant before Justice Duffy
yesterday morning was William A. Tully, a printer, of
No. 363 West Fifty first st. Tully stated to Justice Duffy
that he had played poker and "seven up" at No. 83 on
various occasions, until his money was all gone. Eleven
men were captured. Justice Duffy fined them $4 each
and held Floyd in $300 for special Sessions.
Again William A. Tully was the complainant against
Ephraim Harris, No. 18 North William-st.. for keeping a
gambling house. In this place five printers were captured.
They also paid $4 each, and Harris was held in $300 for
Special Sessions.
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Well it looks like it was more likely to have actually happened too Thackeray. A rotund man, the novelist/lecturer would have liked to try some popular food while in the U.S., so that oyster story sounds likely too.
JeffLeave a comment:
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The earliest version I could find of the Thackeray/Bowery Boy anecdote is attributed to an 1872 lecture by the abolitionist Wendell Phillips.
The State Rights Democrat (Albany, Or.), March 1, 1872, Page 4, Column 1
Thackeray and a Bowery Boy
Wendell Phillips, in his lecture on
Street Life in Europe, gives one little
instance of street life in America.
Thackeray, on a visit here many years
ago, was anxious to see a genuine
Bowery Boy, and a friend pointed
out to him one leaning against a lamp
post, with his hands in his pockets,
his "soap locks" carefully regulating
over his eyebrow, and his cigar tilted
upright between his teeth. Thackeray
was delighted, and determined
to 'interview' the monster. So he
strode with his manly, sweeping gate,
carrying that ever present benignancy
of expression on his face up to
the 'Boy' and remarked, Very innocently,
"Si--excuse me--but I want
to go to Broadway." The 'Boy'
returned the look with one equally
benignant, and replied, "Well, why in
h--l don't you go?"
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Link to a fuller account of the lecture.
Chicago Tribune, March 5, 1873, Page 2, Column 5
Contrasted
Some of the Manners and Customs of Europeans and Americans
Street scenes Acroos the Atlantic as Seen by Wendell Phillips
Another version of the Thackeray story.
Chambers's Journal, Volume 63, November 20, 1886, Page 743
American Traits
An anecdote Thackeray used to relate of an experience of his when in the United States well illustrates this trait of the people. While in New York, he expressed to a friend a desire to see some of the 'Bowery Bhoys,' who, he had heard, were a class of the community peculiar to that city. So one evening he was taken to the Bowery, and he was shown a 'Bhoy.' The young man, the business of the day being over, had changed his attire. He wore a dress-coat, black trousers, and a satin waistcoat; whilst a tall hat rested on the back of his head, which was adorned with long well-greased hair—known as 'soap-locks'—-a style which the rowdies of that day affected. The youth was leaning against a lamp-post, smoking an enormous cigar; and his whole aspect was one of ineffable self-satisfaction. The eminent novelist, after contemplating him for a few moments with silent admiration, said to the gentleman by whom he was accompanied: 'This is a great and gorgeous creature!' adding: 'Can I speak to him without his taking offence?'
Receiving an answer in the affirmative, Thackeray went up to the fellow, on the pretext of asking his way, and said: 'My good man, I want to go to Broome Street.'
But the unlucky phrase, 'My good man,' roused the gall of the individual spoken to. Instead, therefore, of affording the information sought, the 'Bhoy'—-a diminutive specimen of humanity, scarcely over five feet in height—-eyeing the tall form of his interlocutor askance, answered the query in the sense that his permission had been asked for the speaker to visit the locality in question, and he said, patronisingly: 'Well, sonny, yer kin go thar.'
When Thackeray subsequently related the incident, he laughingly declared that he was so disconcerted by the unexpected response, that he had not the courage to continue the dialogue.
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A version with a side of oysters.
Frank Leslie's Popular Magazine, Volume 29, June, 1890, Page 735
When Thackeray first visited this country, he said it was the height of his ambition to swallow an American oyster and to see a Bowery boy. Both wishes were gratified. He was taken down into a basement on the Bowery, and a plate of enormous bivalves was placed before him. Taking one of the giants on his fork, he shut his eyes, opened his mouth and determinedly swallowed it. "How do you feel now?" inquired his guide. "As if I had swallowed a baby!" was the reply of the great-hearted satirist. Coming up into daylight again, a specimen of the "b'hoy" such as has been described was pointed out to him. The big Englishman walked up to the monarch of the street, and remarked, inquiringly : " If you please, I would like to go to Broome Street." Without removing the cigar from between his teeth, the American sovereign retorted, benignly: "Well, say, sonny, why don't you go?" Another Englishman had been vanquished by a Yankee.
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^^^^ LOL!
I have seen "Gangs of New York", but didn't know the name of the American gang. Interesting it spread to England, too.Leave a comment:
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Hi Pat,Originally posted by Pcdunn View Post
Can you imagine a movie set in the 19th Century where Dickens or Thackeray enters a 19th Century soda shop and has the conversation in those anecdotes with either Leo Gorcey or Huntz Hall (in correct 19th Century costume)?
The 19th Century gangs (from the notorious "Five Point" area of slums in lower Manhattan) are the same group from whom "Bill the Butcher" in "Gangs of New York" (Daniel Day Lewis) arose from.
JeffLeave a comment:
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The two anecdotes sound very much alike in the dialogue repartee. Only difference is that one is with Dickens asking for directions to the "Fulton Ferry" and one is with Thackeray asking for Broadway. Dickens made his first, controversial visit to the U.S. in 1842, in which he was lionized but found the Americans too rough for his tastes, and hypocrites because of the existence of slavery in "the land of the free" (ignoring the fact that in the slavery - abolished British empire people of African ancestry were lucky to be treated as third class citizens for most of the 19th and 20th Centuries; Dickens wasn't alone in this national hypocrisy of Great Britain, for many American abolitionists closed their eyes about it, including Frederick Douglas and William Lloyd Garrison). Dickens published "American Notes for General Circulation" in 1842, and made thousands of outspoken enemies in the U.S.Originally posted by TradeName View Post
Thackeray made his visit in 1852, visiting the major cities and the White House (he spent an evening at a soiree by President Millard Fillmore). His reactions to Americans were friendlier, and his 1855 novel, "The Virginians" (his sequel to the better remembered, "The History of Henry Esmond") is the first major British novel in which George Washington appeared in any role - and a positive one at that).
My guess is the anecdote (if true at all) was originally an incident involving Charles Dickens.
Dicken's "American Notes" was not the only negative book on the U.S. Fanny Trollope wrote a book on the U.S. in the 1830s after her attempt to open a large store in Cincinatti failed. Fanny was the mother of Anthony Trollope and his less recalled brother and novelist Theodore Adolphus Trollope.
Most British travelers (Thackeray excepted) were negative in discussing the U.S. as uncouth, etc. Then it changed in the 1840s when novelist James Fenimore Cooper wrote "Homeward Bound" in the first of two books contrasting a family's bad experiences in Britain and in the U.S. (the sequel is "Home As Found"). These two volumes are not generally well recalled like the "Leatherstocking" novels, or "The Spy" or "The Pilot". An even better attack was in 1857 when our Consul to Liverpool, Nathaniel Hawthorne, wrote "Our Old Home" giving his sharp dislike for British foibles.
The situation improved later in the century - Henry James not only enjoying Britain, but ending up living there and (in World War I) becoming a British citizen.
It did not always work well. In the 1880s Rudyard Kipling married an American woman, and went to live in Vermont. There he worked with his brother-in-law on a novel dealing with Indians in pre-Revolutionary American, which is not remembered too well. Kipling and his brother-in-law had a bad relationship (the brother-in-law was an alcoholic) and it soured Kipling about life in the U.S.
JeffLast edited by Mayerling; 02-22-2016, 03:46 PM.Leave a comment:
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Wikipedia distinguishes between the actors appearing in 20th century motion pictures (1946-1958) as "The Bowery Boys", (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bowery_Boys) and "the 19th century nativist gang in New York City" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowery_Boys )
The movies were fond of tough-talking New Yorkers, and The Bowery Boys had been preceded by "The Dead End Kids", "The Little Tough Guys", and "The East Side Kids".Leave a comment:
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The Bowery Boys were a New York gang known for their rudeness to British authors.
New Amsterdam Gazette, March 31, 1884, Page 15
THE BOWERY IN EARLY DAYS.
When Charles Dickens came to New York he was very anxious to learn some particulars regarding these Bowery boys. One day, dressed in the garb of a countryman, he came upon some of the young men standing near the Bowery Theater. He accosted them and commenced a conversation as follows: "I say, young men!" "Well, what is it?" they asked, looking sharply at his singular figure. "I say, young men, I wish to go to the Fulton Ferry." "Why in h--- don't you go then?" was their prompt answer. Dickens had obtained a sufficiently true insight into their character, and went his way.
The Guardian (Philadelphia), March 1874, Page 91
SOFT ANSWERS.
It is said that on one of Thackeray's visits to New York, he was eager to form the acquaintance of the Bowery boys, who have acquired quite a reputation for rude repartee. Perhaps he was in search of material for a future work of fiction. Walking through the Bowery, he at length found one of these little Arabs on a street corner. Here was a chance to study the Bowery boy. Thackeray was a very dignified gentleman, whose polished manners and stately bearing were calculated to impress even his equals. How would they impress the boy?
He opened the conversation by asking the way to another street.
"Boy, I should like very much to go to Broadway."
"Well, why the h--- don't you go there," was his quick reply. There ended Thackeray's study of the Bowery boys.Leave a comment:
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In 1890 the leader of a London gang known as the "Bowery Boys" threatened to "Jack the Ripper" a pub operator.
Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper (London, England),
Sunday, September 14, 1890; Issue 2495.
Page 4, Column 2
POLICE INTELLIGENCE
[...]
THAMES [Police Court]
[...]
A STATE OF THINGS NOT TO BE
TOLERATED.--William Whitwell, alias
Woodey, who had suffered 18 months'
imprisonment for killing a man, and who
was known as one of the most desperate
characters in the East-end was charged
on a warrant with using threats towards
Mrs. Kruze, of the Horn of Plenty,
Market-street, Poplar, whereby she went
in bodily fear.--Mr. George Hay Young
prosecuted and stated that the prisoner
was a man who never did any work,
and was the leader of a gang of
roughs known as the "Bowery Boys."
Mrs. Kruze, a widow, said she knew the
prisoner as loafing around the house. On
Monday he and six or seven others came
in. He wanted her to fill the pots with
beer, and she refused to serve them. He
then said he would split open her head
with a pot and "Jack the Ripper" her.
He said he would have her and "undo"
her, and did not mind doing a "stretch"
for her. The prisoner then stationed
members of his gang at each door and
prevented customers coming in. Her
house was boycotted for upwards of an
hour. The next day the prisoner again
threatened her, and she had to have
five police-constables to protect her.--
Mr. Dickson said it was outrageous in
this country that persons should be
frightened from going about their
business. That sort of thing must be stopped,
and the prisoner would have to find two
sureties in 25l. each or go to prison for
four months.
----endLeave a comment:
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Fascinating. Leoncio Prado was (apparently) a perennial revolutionary in Peru, Cuba, and even the Philippine Islands. And may be considered a martyr, possibly murdered by Chileans when he was wounded. Col. Morel appears to be also a perennial Cuban revolutionary, and it cost him in the end - he too became a martyr.
JeffLeave a comment:
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The Spanish language version of has an article on Leoncio Prado Gutiérrez with a section on the seizure of the steamer Moctezuma which lists Manuel Morey as a participant. A Google translation to English is here.
There's a Spanish language play published in New York in 1877 which lists Manuel Morey as a character.
El Moctezuma: Epopeya en accion en tres actos y en verso (New York: E. Perez, 1877), link
By Joaquin Maria Perez
A contemporaneous account allegedly by one of the participants.
The Abbeville Press and Banner [South Carolina], January 24, 1877, Page 4, Column 4
The Captured Spanish Steamer.
The story has been told of the capture
of the Spanish steamer Moctezuma by
Cubans, but not in detail. It was as follows:
A party of eleven Cubans left
St. Domingo for Santiago de Cuba on
the steamer. Their arms consisted of
revolvers and swords, the latter concealed
in trunks, while some had bowie
knives. Prado, chief of the expedition,
disposed the men in position, when dinner
was being served, at half-past five.
Three of the party, led by Prado,
summoned the officers of the steamer to
surrender. One of the party says:
The signal of each man to his post was
given, and Prado, with myself, each with
a revolver in his hand, entered the cabin,
while Morey guarded the entrance to
the door. Prado told the assembled officers
that he demanded the surrender of
the vessel. They, seeing such a small
attacking party, commenced to resist.
Several shots were then fired by us to
intimidate the Spaniards, but with no
intent to kill. The resistance became
more determined, and Prado having been
wounded, it was found necessary to take
life to he successful in our mission. Firing
in earnest then took place. The
first to fall was Captain Cocho, with two '
shots in his head. Then came the steward
who had wounded Prado, who recived [sic]
a bullet in his heart; a Catalonian
passenger and a sailor who resisted were
also killed. Among the wounded were a
fireman, who received a shot in the arm;
the storekeeper and a Cuban passenger,
who was accidentally wounded. These
were the total casualties, and we were
masters of the Moctezuma and her officers
and crew, numbering some seventy
souls. There were also a number of
passengers, among them being a Spanish
official connected with the star department
of the island of Porto Rico.
We fastened the hands of some of our
prisoners for a short time, while we held
a council of war. Soon afterward we
released them. Meanwhile the working
of the ship was conducted as before.
On the following day the passengers and
part of her crew were landed near Port
au Paix on the northern coast of Hayti.
Returning, however, to the steamer, she
continued on her course, subsequently
sending Gutierrez and myself ashore in
a boat with messages for the republic of
Cuba and the agents of said republic.
The Cespedes, the name the steamer
is now known by, is no pirate, for she
carries letters of marque. She is commanded
by men ready and willing to
sacrifice their lives for Cuban
independence. I cannot conclude without
expressing the warmest thanks to Peru
for the noble sons she has given us to
help us in our struggle for liberty.
---end
In the New York case, Delgado and Morey jumped bail, and both were reported dead later in 1886.
New York Sun, may 5, 1886, Page 4, Column 2
Where is Filibuster Delgado?
Manuel Morel, one of the allged leaders of
the steamship City of Mexico Honduras filibustering
expedition, gave $3,000 cash bail yesterday before
Commissioner Shields to appear for trial on the 12th. Soto,
ex-President of Honduras, is said to have furnished the
money. Delgado did not appear. He has one day more
in which to turn up without forfeiting his bail.
---end
New York Sun, May 12, 1886, Page 4, Column 1
COL. MOREL LEAVES TOWN, TOO
It Looks as if Soto's Filibusters had a Prejudice Against Courts of Law
Col. Manuel Morel, one of the leaders of
Soto's filibustering expedition against Honduras, quit
the city on Friday with the intention, so officers of the
Spanish Consular service say, of not returning to stand
trial on the indictment presented against him. He had
put up a certified check for $3,000 as bail. There was a
suspicion that the Spanish Government might ask for
his delivery to it for a homicide committed on the
Caribbean Sea on a Spanish vessel. The story is that Morel,
[and] a son of Gen. Prado, and others were employed by Gen.
Aguillera [sic], the Cuban revolutionist, to conduct an
expedition against Cuba in 1876, and took passage in the
Spanish mail steamship Montezuma, sailing from a
Central American port. When the vessel reached the
Caribbean the filibusters seized it, after a fight with the
officers and crew, in which many were killed, Capt.
Cacho made a strong resistance, but was overpowered,
thrown overboard, and drowned. The officers of the
Spanish frigate Isabella Cattolica learned of the capture
and gave chase to the filibusters, who scuttled and set
fire to the Montezuma, and made their escape in open
boats. Gen Delgado, leader of Soto's expedition,
forfeited his bail last week.
----end
New York Sun, May 13, 1886, Page 1, Column 5
Delgado's and Morel's Bail Forfeited
Gen. Delgado and Col. Morel, the leaders of
the steamship City of Mexico expedition against
Honduras, did not appear at the United States Circuit Court
yesterday to plead to indictments. Their bail was declared
forfeited. Morel's bondsman was Ramon Pine of
17 Broadway. He gave a certified check for $3,000.
Counsel have no hope that the filibusters will return.
---end
Appletons' Annual Cyclopaedia and Register of Important Events of the Year 1886, Volume 11 (New York: D. Appleton, 1887), Page 424
Honduras
[...]
Events of 1886—-On February 14 the American man-of-war “Galena” captured, near the Colombian island of San Andres. the American steamer “City of Mexico,” with an alleged filibustering party and arms on board, said to have Honduras for their destination, and brought them into Key West, where the vessel was Iibeled and the leaders—-Gen. Delgado. Col. Morey, M. Soto, and Capt. Kelly—-were prosecuted in the United States District Court. This attempt having failed, ex-President Marco Aurelio Soto left New York for Costa Rica, and thence sent a small revolutionary force of 77 devoted political adherents to Honduras, for the purpose of stirring up the people to revolt against the constituted authorities; but not a man could be induced to join them. Meanwhile the Government force, sent against them, defeated the little band on August 18, at La Mani, eighteen miles from Comayagua, the Cuban Col. Morey being killed, together with Velasquez and seven other chiefs and officers. Four leaders—-Gen. E. Delgado, Lieut Col. Indalecio Garcia, Commander Miguel Cortéz, and Lieut. Gabriel Loyano—-were shot at Comayagua on October 18. President Bogran offered to spare Gen. Delgado’s life, on condition of a promise not to take up arms against Honduras again; but the offer was spurned.
---end
The court's decision in the forfeiture of the City of Mexico.
The Federal Reporter, Volumes 27-28 (St. Paul: West Publishing Co., 1886), Pages 148-155
The City of Mexico
(District Court, S.D. Florida. April 19, 1886.
A related lawsuit.
The New York State Reporter (Albany: W. C. Little, 1890), Pages 448-452
William Jex et al, App'lts, v. Adolph D. Straus et al, Resp'ts.'
(Court of Appeals, Second Division, Filed October 7, 1890.)
Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States (Washington, DC: GPO, 1886), Pages 138-142Leave a comment:
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