I have mentioned in the course of these recollections an individual by the name of Spence Pettis. This man was a peculiar sort of a person, so peculiar I trust there are not many more like him; if there was, this world wouldn’t be a very pleasant place to live in.
He was at one time very well known in New York and “cut up a considerable of a swell.” At one period he had rooms at the Hoffman house and hob-nobbed with first-class people.
But for all that he was a professional forger and “bond smasher,” and had been one of the dirtiest and lowest of New York thieves, and all the time, whether high or low in style, had been one of the meanest men that ever breathed the air in this community.
He had his good points, of course; everybody has these, even the devil, I guess, and so I might as well say somethin’ about these to start with.
He came from a of respectable family, from the South somewhere, and always claimed to be an F.F.V. [First Family of Virginia]. He had received a good education and could talk very nicely, usin’ good language and plenty of it.
He was neat and clean in his dress and person, too, and that counts for somethin’. He always kept his hands and face as smooth and white as if he was a woman, and his linen was spotless. He believed in French laundries.
He could write a good letter; could quote poetry; could sing a good song; tell a good story, and walk out of a room like a gentleman.
In the latter part of his life, too, he showed a good deal of what is called “moral courage” and nerve, in the way of “cheek.” He put up big jobs on the government and private individuals, and showed a good deal of criminal coolness.
He delighted to be called “the great American bond smasher,” or as he once spoke of himself, “the Napoleon of forgers.”
He was concerned in the robbery of the United States Treasury in Washington, the year after the late war broke out. This was one of the biggest robberies ever attempted and carried through, and over two million dollars worth of United States securities were gotten away with by the thieves, of whom Spence Pettis was the head and front. After the robbery he had the impudence to treat with the government, and offer to return some of the bonds if the government would make him one of its regular detectives, intendin’ to use this position, of course, to cheat the government all the more, and the more easily. Cool, wasn’t it?
He was mixed up with a lot of other big robberies and forgeries, one forgery for $30,000, I think, on the Bank of Commerce. There was nothin’ small about him from the time the war commenced and he got to be a bond robber and forger.
But in the early part of his life he was one of the smallest, meanest pickpockets that ever crawled; had been arrested for pocket-pickin’ around Fulton Market, and had done time in the treadmill in England for petty larceny. He was rather clumsy as a pickpocket, and never amounted to much in that line. He was cut out for a forger and a bond robber, and he never made his mark till he found his line. It is in crime like actin’ or writin’–you have to stumble on till you find out what you are fit for.
Up to the very last it made Spence Pettis more mad than anything else to be reminded by anybody of his early career as a pickpocket. They say that the only time he ever tried to do a bodily injury to a man was when a thief once reminded him of a woman called “Laughin’ Sal,” with whom he used to work the panel house game before the war. Spence Pettis, at this allusion, darted up with a knife, all blue with passion, and could have cut the other feller’s throat had he not been prevented.
But the meanest things about Spence Pettis were in himself. He was meaner even than his early line of pocket-pickin’. Most thieves have some honor about ‘em, to each other, at any rate. That’s what thieves mean by “honor among thieves,” but Spence Pettis didn’t have a bit of this honor. He would betray a thief as quickly as he would betray anybody else. He had stolen from thieves, he had turned States evidence against thieves lots and lots of times, till it was a sort of wonder that the whole thievin’ fraternity didn’t turn against him and mob him.
Once he went round among the thieves of New York here and interested their sympathies in the case of a poor burglar named Thompson, who had gone crazy and was in a lunatic asylum. Spence Pettis could talk beautifully, and he pleaded the cause of poor crazy Thompson till it really made some of the thieves weep.
He talked so well, in fact, that he soon got a thousand dollars or more–nobody ever knew just how much–to get poor crazy Thompson out of the asylum on condition that he would be sent out of the country to England, where his folks belonged.
Well, Spence Pettis went to the authorities and presented the cause of poor crazy Thompson, tellin’ that he had five hundred dollars (just one half the money he had really collected) to send him over to die among his folks in England.
The authorities yielded at last to Pettis’s talkin’ and prayin’ and let Thompson out of the asylum. That was enough to satisfy the other thieves that Pettis was acting “on the square,” and they didn’t bother further.
But Pettis had no notion of bein’ satisfied with one half of the money he had collected for crazy Thompson. He determined to keep both halves of the thousand dollars. So he gave poor crazy Thompson a bogus passage ticket and sent him in the steerage of a steamer to Europe.
The officers on the steamer discovered the bogus ticket just after startin’, and poor crazy Thompson was roughly treated and sent ashore without a friend, without a home, without a dollar in the world, much worse off than when he was in the lunatic asylum. The poor devil wandered around the street hungry and sick for some twenty-four hours. Then he wandered into a “boozin’ den” or drinkin’ den, where Spencer Pettis was having a good time on the money that the thieves had contributed for himself. Pettis saw him, and bein’ afraid he might make a fuss, slipped a five dollar bill into his hand and got him to clear out. This five dollars was all that poor crazy Thompson ever got out of the thousand dollars the thieves had contributed for his release. He was found the next day sick and drunk, and was at once returned to his old place at the lunatic asylum.
If there’s any story that can beat this in meanness I haven’t heard it and don’t want to tell it. This Spence Pettis was just as mean to women as he was to men. He came across a pretty woman once and made love to her. She was a married woman, but took a wild fancy to Pettis, who had a tongue in his head. She got completely infatuated with him and promised, if he would only love her, she would do whatever he asked her. So Pettis told her to prove the strength of her affection by robbin’ her husband of all his ready money and jewelry. The woman hated to do this. She wasn’t quite ready to deceive a man and rob him too; but Pettis insisted. So one night she robbed her husband and eloped with Pettis. The pair went off together, and the poor woman, havin’ nobody else to care for or to cling to, loved Pettis more than ever, after she had ruined her life and risked her soul for him.
But by this time the money the woman had stolen was all gone and the trinkets she had stolen were all pawned; and Pettis had got tired of her. Care and remorse had made her ugly and old before her time, and she had taken to drinkin’, too, to drown her grief. So, altogether, Pettis was sick of her, and after cuffin’ her and cursin’ her, one night he left her–left her in a hole in East London without a shillin’ in the world–left her to starve and die, which she did a few days after his desertion.
The very night she died Spence Pettis was on a spree, celebratin’ his first night in new quarters with a new woman–a rather good looking woman called Nell Coffee.
Mrs. Nelly Coffee was a thief–quite a smart thief–and had “put by” a snug sum of money. She knew about this other woman, but didn’t care what became of her so she got Pettis, who pleased her fancy just then. Well, Pettis drank and gambled till he had used up all the money that Nelly Coffee had put by. Then he got tired of her in her turn and quarreled with her terribly. One night Nelly Coffee aided a gang of thieves to do some robbery, and Spence Pettis found it out. She had called him some hard names the night before and he now saw his dirty way to his revenge–and to a little dirty money besides. So the sneak went to the authorities and informed on the woman, without her knowin’ it, of course. Then he called on her in prison, pretended to love her all over again and to be so sorry for her. This delighted the blind, trustin’ fool, and she gave the sneak all her money and clothes, or told him where he could get ‘em. He went right off, got the clothes, pawned ‘em and stole her money–and never saw her again.
And this was the man who years afterwards lived at crack New York hotels and was treated as a gentleman. The only time that, accordin’ to my notion, Spence Pettis got his deserts was in Columbia, South Carolina. He had been organizin’ a gang of thieves and had so fixed it that all the easy work and money would fall to his share, and all the hard work and risk to the lot of an old and rather stupid thief called Yates. This arrangement worked very well for a time, and Spence Pettis lived at a high rate. But some little thing tripped up everything (as little things often do), and the police discovered the secret of Pettis and caught him at last.
Then he showed how mean he was. He offered to “give away” Bill Yates at once. But the authorities in the old Palmetto State didn’t have much regard for thieves, and still less for informers. So they can condemned him to have his head shaved and to be branded, and then publicly flogged.
At this Spence Pettis whined and cried like a baby. He promised not to steal again if they would only let up on him, and offered to give up every thief he knew, North and South, and to make all sorts of startlin’ revelations, if only they would not whip him. But the authorities were so disgusted with him by this time that they ordered five extra lashes. There was a large crowd of people to see this whippin’, and Spence Pettis acted like a white-livered cur. He got on his knees and begged for mercy. Then he tried to bribe the people in charge of the whippin’; then he cursed terribly; then he struggled, but only for a minute. Then, when they began to beat him, he began to bellow like a bull. He yelled and cried fearfully. A woman would have been ashamed to be as cowardly as he was. He was a perfect calf.
When they branded him he yelled till you would have imagined he was a troop of Indians on the warpath, and although he always wore his hair short he begged as hard not to have his head shaved as if he was a woman with hair reachin’ down to the waist.
The keepers spat at him, he was so cowardly, and the prisoners in the jail refused to associate with him.
Yet this mean, whinin’ cur got ahead of the United States government several times, and had “nerve” enough to steal millions of dollars durin’ his lifetime.
As my old friend, Phil Farley, the great thief-catcher, who knows more about crime and criminals than most men, says: “It takes all sorts of people to make a world, but it’s lucky the world doesn’t hold many men like Spence Pettis.”
[Editor’s notes: All the facts and general tone of this column are found in Phil Farley’s chapter on Spence Pettis in his book Criminals of America.
Pettis not only asked, but was put on the payroll of the nascent United States Secret Service as a special agent, to assist in tracking other forgers. This was part of a strategy (heavily criticized) of the first Secret Service Director, William P. Wood, to use supposed reformed forgers as spies and informers.
It soon became evident that Pettis was feeding the Secret Service information of little value. Indeed, he caused the Secret Service to detain and harshly interrogate several known criminals for their role in a specific robbery, even though he had no knowledge of their guilt. I wrote of this in my 2019 book on master forger James B. Crosse, who was far above Pettis in skill and character: The Writing Master: The Story of the Gentleman-Thief and Forger, James B. Crosse.]
