I have met with all classes of people in my time, and, among others, with detectives. Sometimes they have come to my place on business, to see if they couldn’t come across somebody they were lookin’ for, but generally they have just dropped in on a friendly visit. Some of ‘em are first class fellows, and some of them ain’t, just like any other class of people. John S. Young, chief of the central detective squad, was a great chum of Police Superintendent John A. Kennedy, who used to think there wasn’t another man in the world like him. Young was as fat as Falstaff, and didn’t look a bit like the shrewd man he was. He could wink and squint with his eye in a way that would have made the fortune of a comic actor, and he could tell a good story better than most men.
Young used to be very well fixed at one time, owned a neat house in Amity street, gave parties which cost $500, drove his fast horse and sported his diamond. But towards the end of his life he was “down on his luck,” and died poor. Young used to be a splendid judge of men, and had some A1 detectives under him–Kelso, for one of ‘em. Kelso was himself for a while the captain of the detective squad. He was almost as fat as Young, wore heavy side whiskers and had the devil of a temper when it ever got started. Kelso was very fond of theatrical people. He afterwards went into the coal business and made it pay. Then there was Elder, a rather short, thick-set man, with a keen, bright eye–looked like a parson or a man of business, or anythin’ in the world but a detective. But he was one of the oldest and smartest men in the force, and a worker–a quiet family man, who took care of himself and his family. He used to work along with his chum, McCord, who was just his opposite–a big man, and grim and glum, whereas Elder was as polite as a dancin’ master, and as mild as a May mornin’. Then there was Farley, who was very particular about his clothes–a sort of dandy detective, and, like many a dandy, devilish smart–and Dusenberry, and Bennett, and McDougall, and Eustace, and Radford–Radford being one of the “nobs,” as good a judge of diamonds as he was of thieves.
Radford and Dusenberry used to work together, and were called “the ponies.” They used to be sent to take care of all the big receptions and balls, and if a pickpocket tried to work his little racket while “the ponies” were around, he generally was made to wish he hadn’t. Farley didn’t amount too much on everyday cases, but where there was a big case he was just the man. He would forget all about his clothes then and go in for biz. Elder knew everythin’ in the city of New York, and when he was standing at the door of a theatre you couldn’t get a thief to pass that door. Once a pickpocket made the acquaintance of a good-lookin’ young lady, who, of course, didn’t know anything about his true character. He invited her to see “The Black Crook” one night, and she accepted the invite. The thief put on his best clothes and tried to look as much like a banker as he could; and the young lady, for her part, was gotten up stunnin’. Well, the thief put on some of his best work in the taffy line as he and the young lady were ridin’ down in the carriage to Niblo’s, and the two made quite a pretty sight as they walked up towards the doorkeeper’s gate. But all of a sudden the man who wanted to look like a banker looked like a ghost–or as if he had seen a ghost–and he never went through that doorkeeper’s gate. He stopped right in the nicest of his taffy, pretended to have a fit, and made the young lady go back to a carriage, and took her back home again. He had seen Elder standin’ talkin’ to the doorkeeper, and he didn’t want Elder to see him.
There used to be a good deal of rivalry between the different detectives, and between the central detectives and the detectives belongin’ to the different wards or precincts. There was nd Jack McCarthy, for instance. He used to be up in the Twenty-ninth Precinct, and he knew everybody in it. Jack used to wear a big diamond and drove a fast horse, and was a great ladies’ man. But he kept his eye skinned all the time, and he made as many hauls, or had a hand in as many jobs, as any of the Mulberry street squad.
Young used to say that he only feared one man as a rival, and that was Captain Jordan, of the Sixth Precinct. Jordan was a jolly fellow off duty, but tremendous on discipline. He had a great memory for faces, and was only once mistaken in his man.
A young fellow who came from the West on his bridal trip with about five thousand dollars in his pocket for expenses, was hustled off to limbo one day by two of Jordan’s men, actin’ under Jordan’s orders. The young fellow was first scared, and then got mad. He protested his innocence, and gave references to some first-class people in New York, but Jordan wouldn’t have it that he was the thief he was lookin’ for, and it wasn’t for two days that Jordan was convinced he was mistaken. The real thief and the young fellow from the West looked almost exactly alike, only the real thief had a mole on his left cheek, which the young man from the West didn’t. At last Jordan threw up the sponge, and owned up his mistake, and although the young fellow from the West acted like a brick, and didn’t kick up any circus, as he might, the fact that he had made such a mistake always afterward worried Jordan, and at last the bother about the Nathan murder, and Jordan’s not bein’ able to discover the real murderer, fairly killed him.
One of the detectives who once flourished around New York is in the dry goods business now, and has been for several years, with Lake & McCreary one spell, and Lord & Taylor another. He was and is a great pet of the ladies, and looks like the very last man you would ever take for a detective.
His name is Warren, and they used to call him “Gentleman Warren,” he was such a swell. He was fond of the opera, and really was, I believe, some sort of relative or intimate friend of Miss Kellogg. He dressed in the height of fashion, and traveled in style. He could do the “ta-ta” business, and “tickle you with a feather” most beautifully. He could dance the German and talk French, and sing a good song and tell a good story. He was tall, slim, rather sharp-faced and rather handsome, a rather good fellow, too, and a tip-top detective in the insurance detective line. Whenever a man in New York wanted a big policy of insurance on his house or goods, the insurance companies would send to Warren, who would make all the necessary inquiries about the man, and report right off, without the man who applied for the policy knowin’ anything about it.
One time a man, way up in the world, who gave big parties, and at whose house Warren had been several good times, applied for a policy of insurance. Although the insurance company thought it was hardly worth while, in his case, to make the usual inquiries, yet they put the case into Warren’s hands, who set to work, just the same as if he had never had his legs under the other man’s mahogany, and found out to his own surprise and that of the insurance companies’, that the man who wanted a policy was a very shaky subject, and was intimate with a gang of low fellows who were mixed up with fires on insured goods.
Well, Warren reported what he had found out, and of course the insurance companies would not make out this man’s policy, and, of course the man naturally told his intimate friend, Warren, all about it, and of course his intimate friend Warren wondered what on earth the insurance people meant by such a course of conduct, etc., etc.
There was another queer duck of a detective, called Scott, who worked in and around New York pretty extensively on his own hook. Scott was a short, wiry little fellow, with eyes like black diamonds, so sharp and sparklin’. He had been connected with the Capitol Prison, Washington, and had got quite intimate with the British Minister.
The Irishmen round New York used to swear that Scott was in the pay of the British government, and the Fenians in New York used to hate him, and to go for him whenever they thought they could get him, but Scott knew how to take care of himself and the boys didn’t manage to get away with him after all. His place of business was on Broadway, near Fulton street, and he did a good deal of general work, and made it pay.
Near Scott’s place there was another detective office, where Charlie Elmore used to hang out. The boys in his own line of business didn’t think much of Elmore, but they thought a good deal of his partner, a man called Wildey, who was once on the regular police force. This Wildey was the greatest man for gettin’ all sorts of odds and ends of information. He could pick up a scrap of news about a man or woman here, and get a bit of gossip about him or her there, and then put this and that together somehow and sell ‘em by the lot to the highest bidder.
It was said that Wildey used to get some of his best points from White Mary, as they called her. White Mary was a tall, thin woman, rather innocent and stupid-lookin’, but like many of these innocent-lookin’ women, as smart as they make ‘em. Her real name, I believe, was Mary Gilsey, and she had taken a fancy to the detective business and made it pay. She never forgot a place she was once in, a face she once saw or a name she once heard. The boys used to try to stump her on these points, but they couldn’t do it.
Although a detective herself, after a fashion, and makin’ up with all kinds of people, Mary Gilsey was “all right” in her character. She was too smart to let her own heart get the start of her own head. So she always kept cool, and got along just as well as if she was a man.
Once White Mary was put on the track of a gay young clerk who was suspected of embezzlin’ money from his employers. She made the acquaintance of her man through the Station D dodge, and found out that the suspicions against the young fellow were solid. But the young fellow fell downright in love with White Mary, and offered her marriage and all the money he had embezzled, some $5,000. He was a good-lookin’ young man, too, and White Mary said afterwards that she came nearer fallin’ in love with him than any man she had ever met. But although she wouldn’t marry him, Mary had some kind of womanly feelin’ for the young man who cared for her. So she pretended to accept his offer of marriage, and when he, boy-like, in a moment of infatuation, handed her the money he had stolen, she took it and said she would keep it for him till they got married. Then she went to the firm that employed the young man and made ‘em promise that if she got ‘em back their money–or the greater part of it–they wouldn’t prosecute the young man, wouldn’t even discharge him, but keep them in their employ the same as before, if she would guarantee his good behavior. The head of firm kicked a little against this last condition, but he agreed to that too, at last, and then Mary handed him right on the spot the money that the young fellow had given her.
Then she went back to the young man and told him that she didn’t and couldn’t love him, but that she was a detective, and that she had found out that he had stolen this money, and that she had given it back to the firm he had stolen it from. But she didn’t let him know that the firm had employed her to watch him, or that anybody suspected him at all. So she gave him good advice, and made him promise for her sake to be an honest man in the future, and here she left him, and the young man was as honest as the sun ever after.
Another smart woman in this detective line of business was called Johnson, and used to do business in Chicago, as well as in New York. She is livin’ still, and not long ago was flourishing at one of the crack New York hotels.
This Johnson woman was rather stout, quite good-lookin’, with a neat figure, and a steel-cold, blackish-gray eye that looked right through and through one, but didn’t let anyone look through her. She had a step as light as a cat’s, and a soft voice, but she was a woman of great nerve.
She lived in the same house with a “doctor” who was supposed to be concerned in producin’ abortions, and she got posted thoroughly in everythin’ about the “doctor,” pretended to be sick herself, and got all the points against him “dead to rights.” Then let the police in the house, took the chances of her own life–for the “doctor” would have shot her, or poisoned her, or stabbed her without any kind of compunction if he had been suspected–and never left him till she had him safely in the hands of the officers of the law. And she managed this so well that the “doctor” never for a moment suspected her, and in fact worried about her bein’ all safe himself, till on the day of his trial they brought against him as the principal witness the same sick woman, or pretended sick woman, he had taken such a fancy to at his place, and whose fate he had been worryin’ about. Of course it was all up with the “doctor” then, and he probably learned more in five minutes about certain kinds of women then he had known all his life before.
This Johnson woman was a mighty smart woman every way. Once they suspected a certain party, a man, of forgin’ certain documents, but he had covered up his tracks, and so they set this Mrs. Johnson at him. She got introduced to him and then stuck up quite an acquaintance at once with him, and after a while the two got up a correspondence, and then she pretended to be mighty interested in the different kinds of handwritin’ and got him to copy in different styles of handwritin’, and different words. She never used any of the same words at first that had been used in the forged documents, but only words with the same letters in ‘em, or some of ‘em. Then after a while she would use a whole word of one of those used in the forged papers placed among other words, so as to attract no suspicion, and she found that her man could perfectly and exactly imitate the handwritin’ of the forged documents. She kept on at this correspondence until in her letters from this man she had two sets complete of each and every word used in the forged documents. Those sets she took and cut out of the letters, just as the words occurred, here and there, and pasted ‘em together on slips of paper, and they made two exact facsimiles and copies of the forged documents in the handwritin’ of this man right in the midst of letters bearin’ his own signature, on which he couldn’t go back if he wanted to.
Well, she gave up all the evidence to the authorities and gave away her man with it, and the man was brought to trial.
He swore not only that he didn’t write the forage documents, but that he couldn’t write the handwritin’. When, all of a sudden, the District Attorney put in evidence these letters of his to this Johnson woman, and she gave her testimony, and they showed those slips of paper made up of his own words, taken from his own letters, bearin’ his own signature.
It was too much for him, and he had to own up; and I don’t believe that there’s a smarter woman in her line ever lived than this Mrs. Johnson.
