Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison: Fifteen Years in Solitude
Irving, and from that time on I had his entire confidence. Tuesday
evening I said good-bye to my mother, merely remarking in explanation of
my journey that I had a commission given me to execute in Europe.
Leaving her, I went to our rendezvous, near Broadway and Astor place,
where I found Irving, who handed me over his "boodle" (as he termed
it), remarking confidentially that I was to give him on my return his
share into his own hands; and, singularly enough, each of the others did
precisely the same thing. About 11 o'clock the other two came in, and
after some parley White handed over his bonds, and Stanley informed me
he would give me his on board before the steamer sailed the next
morning. I had already paid my bill and sent my baggage over to Jersey
City, so about midnight I set out, they accompanying me as far as the
ferry, and there, after shaking hands a half dozen times, we said
good-bye. Having bought my ticket and engaged my cabin, I went direct to
the steamer and went to bed. In the morning Stanley appeared and gave me
his bonds. Ten minutes later the hawsers were cast off and we were
steaming down the bay. Two hours later Fire Island sank beneath the
horizon, and we were alone on the sea.
Alone on the sea! and a fitting place to tell the story of a famous New
York bank robbery.
In the good old days when Bill Tweed was New York's owner, when Jim Fisk
was the proprietor of our judges and Kelso sat in Mulberry street, the
king of those good men, the police, who defend our lives and property,
this city became a spectacle to gods and men such as we thought then
could never be equaled. We thought so then, but we were not endowed with
second sight, nor with the gift of prophecy, or we might, perhaps, have
reserved our judgment. Still, our masters were a unique collection, and
if they have been equaled or surpassed since, they held with easy grasp
the pre-eminence among all American rulers who had shone and flourished
up to the time when those great men gave us new ideas upon the science
of government. The average and quiet citizen, shocked as he might be and
grumble as he did at the impudent plundering by our masters, their
contempt of public opinion and the cynical display of their luxury,
would doubtless have confined himself to grumbling and to calling for
slow-arriving thunderbolts to crash the oppressors who were despoiling
him had he felt certain that the plunder would be confined to them, that
his property would be safe, at least, from the attacks of those
insignificant, despicable but eminently dangerous plunderers who became
known to the police as common criminals. This, however, was not so.
After being flayed by iniquitous taxes, which he knew were destined to
add to the stores of Tweed, Connolly & Company, he had every day
abundant proof that what the big rascals left him, the little ones would
soon try, by burglary or robbery, to ravish from him, and that they
would do it with perfect immunity, unterrified either by the fear of
present arrest or of later punishment. The Mulberry street office was
divided into three or four little pools, each with its clientele of
dependents, all of whom faithfully and immediately reported to their
patrons the result of any little job they had been engaged in, handing
over to the representative of the pool the 20 per cent. of the result,
which was Headquarters' established commission. This was the ordinary
rate when gentlemen skilled in transferring other people's watches and
portemonnaies from the pockets of their owners to their own, or when
others who had devoted their talents to demonstrating practically the
enormous power of the jimmy and wedge originated and carried out by
themselves the operations peculiar to those classes of industries.
It sometimes happened that special cases offered, for which special
terms were arranged. Such cases stood by themselves. They were confided
only to the acknowledged heads of the profession. Standing outside of
all recognized rules, they were treated apart. Headquarters men were
always sent to the seat of operations to prevent interference, and, in
case of need, to protect their partners. Many a mysterious robbery was
perpetrated to which no clue was ever found; many an anxious search was
undertaken by the bloodhounds of the law to find the robbers, that they
might crack a bottle together and rejoice over the success of their
operations, and sometimes they were joined by men the mention of whose
names in such company would have excited incredulous and unbounded
amazement.
The gigantic heavings of the war were struggling to rest, but the men
whose minds were unhinged and thrown off their balance by the possession
of large sums flowing from transactions, a little irregular, perhaps,
but which the necessities of Government permitted, were endeavoring, by
any means, to open up new fountains of wealth in place of those which
the close of the war had exhausted.
One of the resources presenting itself most naturally to men in a
position to profit by it was speculating with other people's money, and
very naturally the result of such speculation was disastrous in the
highest degree. When detection became inevitable the defaulter generally
fled, hoping to find in a foreign land safety from the stroke of justice
and a shelter from the reproaches of his victims.
Occasionally, one more resolute, dreading flight as much as detection,
flung himself into schemes which, if they failed, meant the most hideous
and utter ruin, but which, if they succeeded, rendered discovery
impossible, and made his position more solid than ever before. One day,
late in the sixties, in the parlor of a bank in Greenwich street, a
gentleman was anxiously scanning the books of the establishment. He
alone in all the institution knew of a secret which would horrify his
brother officials and carry desolation to scores of homes, the first to
suffer being his own. Perhaps had it been possible to exempt this one
home, the misery of the others would not have greatly affected him. But
suffering must be kept from his own house, and all and any means to
banish it would be and must be good.
The gentleman in whose mind these thoughts were passing was the
president of the bank, who knew himself to be a defaulter to an enormous
amount, and who was now anxiously reflecting upon the means to cover up
his robberies. Fortunately for him he was acquainted with the one man
who more than any other in all America was able to help him. This was
Capt. Irving. The president was a man of nerve. He knew, as everybody
else knew, the relations in which the police stood to the thieves, and
he felt that if he could arrange to have his own bank robbed, his
difficulties would vanish, and his share in the defalcations be covered
up.
Little time was left to him before the inevitable discovery, but the
prompt and skillful use he made of it to extricate himself from the
fearful danger of his position makes one almost regret that a man of
such resolution and such opportunities should prove to the world that
high qualities may exist when the moral sense is entirely wanting.
Irving was quickly taken into his confidence, the position explained,
the proposition to rob the bank broached, all possible co-operation in
the way of leaving safes unlocked and doors open, or what, of course,
amounts to the same thing, of furnishing keys and information to open
everything, promised, and then Irving was asked if he could find men to
carry the job into execution. New York in those days was well supplied
with such artists, but the right men to carry out so momentous an
operation had to be sought. The difficulty, however, was not great, and
Irving promptly assured the honorable president that he might
confidently count on the right men at the right time.
Among the professionals who twenty-three or four years ago were
considered "valuable" men at Police Headquarters were Mike Hurley,
Patsey Conroy and Max Shinburn. These were the men whom Irving instantly
determined to employ, and whom he forthwith set about to find. That not
being a matter of any difficulty, the same night the three men met
Irving at his own house, and were delighted over the revelation he made
to them.
One would like to know with what sentiment a man occupying an honorable
and responsible position, a Sunday-school superintendent, the head of a
great financial institution, well known in the money world and respected
in society, slunk to a midnight meeting with burglars.
Did no feeling of shame crimson his face, no sinking of disgust oppress
his heart, as he slipped into a house, where, although he kept aloof
from actual contact with the ruffians, the details of an enormous crime
of which he was the author were debated and settled?
Prudential reasons doubtless kept him from forming a personal
acquaintance with his agents. The risk of exposing himself to future
blackmail must not be incurred, and one may well believe that he shrank
from clasping the hands of these men, who were eagerly awaiting him.
Whatever were his feelings, his desperate position suffered no halting.
The storm was ready to break at any moment. In an instant he might be a
wretched fugitive, with terror before him and infamy howling behind. But
one way led out of this labyrinth. He had resolutely planted his feet in
that way, determined to tread it to the end. He did tread it to the end,
and he came out victorious.
If the suspicions of any afterward pointed toward him, no syllable of
the suspicions was breathed. Who dared suspect that an honorable citizen
had ever, in the dead of night, crept like a robber to a meeting of
outlaws, to concoct the details of an outrageous breach of trust, of a
crime which--none knew it better than he--would carry life-long misery
and suffering to the families of nearly every man who trusted him?
"The evil that men do lives after them," but where does the
responsibility of its author end? Who will ever say what crimes may
spring from the one act of wrongdoing, crimes committed, it may be,
by persons who were directly led into them by the consequences of an act
the perpetrator of which had never heard of those affected by it? How
far does the responsibility of the wrongdoer extend? What weight of
horror is he accumulating on his head?
Such questions may perhaps occur afterward, when the pleasure has been
tasted and is gone, and nothing remains of the detected crime but the
ruin it has wrought; but in the excitement of laying the plot, in the
glamour which the hope of success casts over the schemer, they probably
never intrude, conscience is smothered, and he is left to carry out his
schemes to the end.
Doubtless no such thoughts disturbed the president, as he waited that
night while Irving acted as go-between, carrying messages from him to
the agents and from the agents back again to him. At last the
arrangements were made. Duplicate keys of the safe were to be provided,
and a way, to be presently explained, was to be left open to each of
them. Whatever the robbers found in the safes was to be theirs, and the
task of getting it was to be of the easiest. This, of course, was highly
satisfactory to the thieves, but something more must be prepared for the
stockholders and the public. Bank safes are not so easily emptied; there
must be the appearance, at least, of great effort to effect the robbery,
and marks of the effort must be left behind.
It was, therefore, settled that powerful tools were to be provided,
tools able to tear open any strong-box in the world. Such articles are
expensive, and the burglars had no money to procure them. No man who
knows those people will be surprised at this, for, however much money