For one, I have never been able to see much difference between gamblin’ in stocks and gamblin’ in chips–or if there is any difference it seems to me to be in favor of the chips. For at least you can handle your chips and see ‘em go and where they go to, and get your money on demand when your chips win. But a fellow can lose a million in stocks and never handle or see anythin’, neither his stocks nor his millions. And then, with all their faults, the card-gamblers don’t, like the stock-gamblers, take in poor people, and widows and orphan children and do for ‘em. So, as I have been writin’ about the “bankers” of Wall street, I think I will, in this chapter, say somethin’ about Dancer [sic Danser], the old-time faro-banker. Dancer was, in his day, the boss gambler of New York. He was very fond of money, was old Dancer. Liked to take it in, but hated to put it out. He once tried to commit suicide because he lost some money. It was a good deal of money, too. Nearly $70,000, mostly in cash.
Dancer woke up one mornin’ and missed his money. It seemed at first a very mysterious robbery and nobody could make head nor tail of it. Dancer trusted few people with the knowledge of his wealth or it’s whereabouts, and he had absolute confidence in those whom he trusted at all. So he didn’t know what to do, and was so dispirited that one night he was on the very point of blowin’ his brains out.
Then instead of bein’ hit by a pistol ball he was hit with an idea, which is a good deal better. “A happy thought” beats cold lead any time. The thought which struck him was that one of his most trusted people, a pretty female servant whom he had had round his place for years and believed in as much as he did his own wife and daughter, had been seen a good deal lately with a wild young man who was supposed to be her lover. Dancer was seldom mistaken in his estimate of human nature (especially as in most cases he placed no estimate on it at all), and his faith in the pretty servant girl was supreme. Still he didn’t feel obliged to have any faith on her account in her lover. And somehow Dancer got it into his head that the lover of the servant girl might probably be the guilty party. He put his pistol away, never thought again of suicide, turned detective on his own account and within less than three weeks found that his happy thought had been a very happy one, indeed.
In the innocence of her heart the pretty servant girl had boasted of the confidence her master reposed in her and had unwittingly put her “fast” young lover on the track of the $70,000 that Dancer had then about the house. The crime was traced home to this lover, and as he was of good family and some of his connections well-to-do people, a good part of the stolen money was refunded. But Dancer never trusted anybody, even pretty servant girls, with the knowledge of the whereabouts of his money after that.
Dancer had a good many good points about him after all, and Colonel Lewis, of New Orleans, was among his most influential and inveterate customers. This Colonel Lewis has been long dead and forgotten, but he was quite a character in his day and way. He was for one thing a true American. He loved his country and thought it was the very greatest country under the sun. He used to get red in the face when anybody even hinted that the United States had anythin’ to learn from anybody. And he was very whole-souled and liberal in his expenditures. His purse was at one time pretty big, but his ideas were bigger. When the Mexican war broke out he was ardently in favor of the war. He believed in “manifest destiny” and all that, and thought it would be the salvation of Mexico to become annexed to the United States. But as the Mexicans didn’t want to be saved, Colonel Lewis determined to save ‘em, whether they would or no, and so he fitted out a battery at an expense of over $60,000, standin’ all the expense himself, and presentin’ the battery when finished to Uncle Sam.
This magnificent gift made as much stir as the gift of Vanderbilt’s North Star did.
Colonel Lewis was a very handsome man, tall, finely formed, not a bit conceited. He dressed in the old-fashioned General Washington style, wore his hair in a queue, and was one of the most popular men with the women who ever lived. And it was said of him that he had never told a woman a lie in all his life. At any rate he never had any scandal with the ladies, and never was accused of acting’ dishonorable with ‘em, bein’ in this point one man in a million.
For a long while he was regarded as the very deity of good luck. Everythin’ he touched turned to gold. Several wild speculations even succeeded in his hands. People followed his advice implicitly up till about the year 1870, when the tide began to turn, as it sometimes does turn with those very lucky people, and in those cases I have generally noticed that the ebb tide is even fiercer than the flood, and that they go down at a more terrific rate than even they go up. It was this way with poor Colonel Lewis. Everythin’ now went against him. A bank he deposited largely in bursted. A man he trusted implicitly absconded. A scheme he had every faith and a million of dollars in collapsed. A horse he backed heavily lost the race and dropped fifty thousand of his money, and a woman he loved ran off with another man and broke his heart. All within about five years.
This combination of disasters proved altogether too much for Lewis. He was found dead one mornin’ among strangers, under circumstances pointin’ to suicide. This was bad enough; but, as he had no money and was unknown, he was buried like a pauper in the Potter’s field, this was worse. And, sad, sad story, his body was never reclaimed from the paupers’ buryin’ ground, but was allowed to moulder there; and this was worst of all.
[Editor’s notes: I’ve been unable to identify “Colonel Lewis” or confirm any elements of his melodramatic story.
Mathias “Matt” M. Danser (1810-1876) and his family, on the other hand, generated one of the great melodramatic sagas of the era (which relished sad sentiment). Danser was indeed the boss gambling house operator of the 1850s-1870s, operating the casinos at 676 Broadway (known to all by just that address) and later at 8 Barclay Street (in partnership with John Morrissey).
But first, a more accurate account of the robberies of Danser (there were two) can be found in NYPD Superintendent George Walling’s Recollections of a New York Police Chief:
One of the most successful gamblers I have met was Matthias Danser, and about him there is a somewhat interesting story.
Danser was one of the shrewdest men in his mode of living. He was after the “main chance” all the time. Some persons have said that he never “ ran a square game,” and that in the early days of the war he thus laid the foundations of a vast fortune.
He had establishments in various parts of the city, at one time running both up and down-town “hells.” His last venture was at No. 8 Barclay Street. Shortly after the close of the war he began to prepare to retire from business, and in 1872 he ceased to be a director of the Board of Green Cloth. He was then worth anywhere from $700,000 to $1,000,000. In justice to him, however, it should be said that despite the way in which he made his money he kept his family aloof from his transactions. No one could be more devout than his wife and daughter. “Matt” tried hard to “get religion,” but, to all outward appearances, signally failed. That fact, however, did not interfere with the piety of his family.
He was the most extraordinary man I ever saw in respect to facial development. A slight stroke of paralysis had affected one side of his face, so as to draw his mouth sideways into a pucker ; and when he talked and swore it was hard to keep one’s countenance when looking him in the eye.
“Matt” was not only not a miser, but he was careless in looking after the securities into which he had turned his money. In a trunk with a lock which could have been forced open with a tooth-pick, and in a room which was never secured, in his house at No. 50 West Eleventh Street, he kept securities and bonds worth certainly $400,000, and possibly a great deal more. He was reckless, too, in the choice of the domestic servants of his establishment.
In April, 1875, there entered his service a sly, repulsive-looking woman — Mary Logan. I was afterwards told that Danser’s establishment had been “surveyed” by persons intent upon getting a share of “Matt’s” fortune, and that Mary was “planted” in the house to enable them to attain their ends. At any rate, Mary soon found out where the bonds were kept, and made no mistake when she saved Mr. Danser the trouble of cutting off the coupons. She did this by the light of a candle in the coal cellar. When she had cut off coupons representing $21,640, she hid about $6000 of them under the coal, together with bonds worth $200,000. The other coupons she put in her trunk. On or about May 26, 1875, she was suddenly taken ill, went to St. Luke’s Hospital, and died three days afterwards.
Her relatives — Michael and Ann O’Farrell — came in suspicious haste to Mr. Danser’s to claim her trunk, which they carried away. Mr. Danser did not miss his bonds until nearly a month later. He took the affair as nonchalently as he did the “nipping” of a thousand-dollar bill from his fob pocket by a boot-black in Union Square shortly before. But he called upon Sergeant (now Superintendent) William Murray, who, with Detective (now Detective-Sergeant) Slevin, became very much interested in the search for the missing securities.
A clew to the robbery was found by Mr. Danser’s cook, who in overhauling the cellar unearthed the bonds and coupons. Then Mary Logan’s antecedents and associations were looked into, and suspicion fell on the O’ Farrells. They were not discovered for a long time, but finally Sergeant Murray located them up town on the west side. They were running a large and lucrative clothing establishment, employing many hands and a dozen sewing-machines. When the police made a descent on the place, husband and wife quibbled about their connection with Mary Logan and the contents of her trunk. The place was searched, but no trace of the bonds was found at first.
Sergeant Murray was just coming to believe O’Farrell’s story — that he found in Mary’s trunk a lot of little pieces of paper with printing on them, and that not knowing that they wrere of value he had burned them — when he decided to make a further search, and under the plates of the sewing-machines he discovered seven or eight thousand dollars worth of the coupons.
Then Mr. O’Farrell volunteered the statement that he had sent about $3200 worth to Patrick O’Farrell, his brother, at Lower Cragie County, Edinburgh, Scotland. Sergeant Murray took upon himself to write to Patrick in Michael’s name, requesting the immediate return of the coupons. They came in a letter addressed to “Michael Reynolds, care of D. A. Demey, No. 749 Ninth Avenue.” This letter was impounded at the Post-Office through the connivance of the authorities. The O’Farrells, husband and wife, were tried for receiving stolen goods. The husband alone was convicted (the wife pleaded coverture), and he was sent to State’s prison for five years.Before this, however, the Danser establishment had another startling experience. On the 12th of July, 1875, Mr. Danser had business down town, and his daughter went out to church, leaving Mrs. Ann Louise Danser at home. This was in the morning. Shortly after Mr. Danser left the house, three spruce young men halted in front of the house. One of them took out a note-book, scrutinized the house carefully, and appeared to be taking voluminous memoranda. Then they rang the bell at the basement door.
Mrs. Danser responded, and, as she afterwards said, understood them to say that they wanted to see something about the water. She took them to be employees of the Department of Public Works, sanitary officers or plumbers sent by her husband, or “something of that sort.” They entered the house, and two seconds after the door was closed Mrs. Danser was in their grasp. They conducted her to a rear room on the third floor, and the first question asked her was: “Where’s them bonds?” showing a prior knowledge of Mr. Danser’s investments. Mrs. Danser protested, the rascals bullied and cajoled her, demanded her keys, and, leaving her under guard, went down stairs and admitted confederates to the number, it is thought, of three.
Then they ransacked the house, using, among other tools, a hatchet. They were evidently nervous and on the lookout for the return of Mr. or Miss Danser, or calls from chance visitors, as they did their work bunglingly, overlooking much property of value. At length they found a bundle of $40,000 worth of Virginia City bonds, worth in the market $17,000, and a halt was called. A consultation was held, and Mrs. Danser was left, bound, in the third-story room, awful and profane threats being made against her if she attempted to regain her freedom before an hour had elapsed. It was barely twenty minutes after they left the house that her husband returned and found her in the predicament in which she had been left.
He rushed to the Mercer Street police station, and his endeavors to make himself intelligible are spoken of as earnest but ludicrous in the extreme, by reason of his infirmity. The police did much to try and bring the perpetrators of the robbery to justice. I believe that the job was arranged by “Jim” Brady. But although this maybe so, no one was convicted of the crime and only one arrest was made — that of a man named Frank Moss, who was very soon released.These adventures so affected the Dansers that Matthias died in August, 1876. His wife followed him in November, and Miss Danser, who was engaged to be married to one of the telegraph operators at police headquarters, died in February, 1877, leaving her affianced husband $30,000. The bulk of Matthias Danser’s fortune went into the coffers of various religious organizations, so that what had been gained through the instrumentality of the devil went, in the end, to the service of God.
The Dansers were all interred in Brooklyn’s Greenwood Cemetery, in a magnificent mausoleum.
But what of the “telegraph operator” who was engaged to Mary Danser? His name was George Francis Stevens. He was a relative of the Tammany Hall boss, Bill Tweed. While Tweed was in power, Stevens had an assured future, working for the city. In 1869 he was invited to a birthday party at the home of James Rowland in Philadelphia, where his daughter, young Nellie Rowland, was also celebrating her completion of finishing school. Several eager male admirers were present, but George F. Stevens, with his brash New York dress and mannerisms, got her attention. They began a whirlwind courtship; but Nellie’s father had heard unpleasant rumors of “Boss Tweed” and his cronies, and worried that Stevens might get dragged down when Tweed fell (as he did a few years later). Thus alarmed, James Rowland sent Nellie away. Two years later a notice appeared in a Philadelphia paper, announcing her death in Philadelphia.
A few more years passed. In 1876, Boss Tweed had been jailed (and later escaped, was caught, and returned to prison). Stevens was not implicated in any of the Tweed Ring corruption, and was relegated to a minor position with the city as a police telegraph operator. That year, 1876, Stevens met Mary Danser at church, and the two fell in love. Mary was a charity worker, an “angel of the streets,” and George accompanied her on her rounds to distribute alms to the needy. One night, as they stood on the street, a hand was placed on George’s shoulder. He turned and saw Nellie Rowland–not dead, but alive, though pale, haggard, and sickly. She explained that after her father had sent her away, she planted the story of her death in order to relieve Stevens’s heartache. But her father had recent died, and she decided to seek Stevens out.
But George F. Stevens could neither forget what Nellie had done to him, nor could he forget that he had found a new love. So Nellie was disappointed to find that George had moved on with his life. She returned to Philadelphia, where within days she succumbed to her illnesses, and passed away.
George and Mary Danser continued to plan their wedding to take place in February of 1877. But just days before that event, Mary Danser, too, fell ill, and died. She was buried in her wedding dress. George F. Stevens had loved twice, and lost both his loves.
Mary, the heir of her father’s fortune, left most of it to two dozen charities; but $30,000 went to George F. Stevens. Stevens used the money to travel abroad; and squandered the rest of it, but was allowed to come back and resume his job as telegraph operator. He lived twenty more years, but by 1897 he felt his own health was failing–his brain couldn’t concentrate on work. He wrote out some letters for his relatives, and then, in November, 1897, disappeared.
George’s body was found in the East River in January, 1898. His body was placed in the Greenwood Cemetery Danser mausoleum, next to the body of Mary Danser, as she had requested.]
