Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison: Fifteen Years in Solitude

About the book

Bidwell presents the pursuit of easy money as a journey from youthful confidence into deception, flight, and punishment. A sheltered education gives way to Wall Street speculation, gambling, questionable associates, and transactions that carry him across the Atlantic. The Bank of England forgery and its consequences become the central catastrophe against which earlier adventures are measured. Travel scenes and accounts of corrupt dealings give the narrative the pace of sensational fiction, but the narrator insists on a moral lesson: apparent success in wrongdoing brings lasting ruin. The volume's testimonials reinforce that claim while also advertising the extraordinary character of the story. It is best approached as a participant's dramatic and self-presenting memoir, with its explanations and accusations distinguished from an independent history of the case.

• Ambition and wrongdoing
• Punishment and repentance
• Autobiographical self-presentation

Why read it

The tension between thrilling criminal adventure and moral warning gives this prison memoir its distinctive energy.

English text, copyright 1897 by the Bidwell Publishing Company