Although up to my neck in another research (for publication) project about the balloon-parachute act, I can't resists making little research forays back into the world of nineteenth-century criminals. I've decided to go ahead with an idea I had a year or two ago: to deconstruct the anecdotes conveyed by Herbert Asbury in his classic... Continue Reading →
The Writing Master published
From January 2018 to January 2019, I spent a year researching 204 nineteenth-century professional criminals; however, for four years prior to that I had been researching one single man from that century, the forger James B. Crosse, aka James Buchanan Cross. Crosse has been an obscure figure, with little known about him except small mentions... Continue Reading →
204 Criminals Later…
Professional Criminals of America REVISED About a week ago, I finished researching and updating the last of the 204 criminal profiles included in Thomas Byrnes's 1886 edition of Professional Criminals of America. This had been a year-long project, and one that I undertook thinking that the result might be adapted to print format. However, after... Continue Reading →
King of Burglars
While researching old-time crooks as part of my Professional Criminals of America--REVISED blog project, I came across a "lost" treasure. Maximilian Schoenbein, known to the public as Max Shinburn, was the most famous bank robber of the 1860s. In 1913, three years before he died, 74-year-old Shinburn wrote a series of eleven articles for the... Continue Reading →
Professional Criminals of America – REVISED
I've set up a new blog site as an experiment in historical research, using as its basis the landmark 1886 book by Chief Inspector Thomas Byrnes of the New York Police Department, Professional Criminals of America. https://criminalsrevised.blog Byrnes legacy is decidedly mixed. He was an unapologetic advocate of harsh interrogation techniques, i.e. “the third degree,”... Continue Reading →
Night of the Salamander Safes
During the night of October 28-29, 1851, several stores along the Buffalo lakefront were burglarized. The exact number of break-ins is unclear--at least three, but perhaps as many as 5-10. Several of the stores had valuables stored in safes that were all the same make: Gayler Patent Safes, often described as "salamander" or "hobnail" safes.... Continue Reading →
