The Right Way to Do Wrong (14 page)

“Sophie” Lyons may be taken as a typical case of a born woman criminal. She came of a race of criminals. Her grandfather was a noted burglar in England, her father and mother, who came to America before she was born, both had a criminal record. She was taught to steal as soon as she could walk, and at twelve was arrested for shoplifting. At sixteen she was married to Maury Harris, a pickpocket, but her husband was sentenced to two years in State prison before the honeymoon was over. Later she married “Ned” Lyons, the noted burglar, and became one of the most expert female pickpockets in the country.

“Sophie” Lyons was a beautiful girl with brilliant dark eyes, abundant auburn hair, and a fascinating manner. At the county fairs she would make the acquaintance of men of wealth, and deftly relieve them of their watch or roll of banknotes, while they were fascinated with her blandishments. If caught, she was a consummate actress, and could counterfeit every shade of emotion. Real tears of injured innocence would flow from her beautiful eyes. Lyons pulled off a big coup about two years after their marriage, bought a villa on Long Island with the proceeds, and, though a professional burglar himself, tried to keep his wife from stealing. The taint was too strong, however; she picked pockets for the love of it. Eventually,
both husband and wife were sentenced to Sing Sing Prison, from which they made a sensational escape and got away to Paris. In France, under the name of Madame d' Varney, she continued her brilliant career of crime. Sophie Lyons is supposed to be at large at the present time—somewhere in America. She has one son serving a term in State prison, and two daughters who are being carefully educated in Germany, kept as far as possible in ignorance of their mother's actual character.

The career of Cassie Chadwick, the “Duchess of Diamonds” is of more recent date. She is a woman of about fifty years of age, and has neither great physical beauty nor great personal charm, yet she must have had wonderful powers of persuasion, for she victimized such men as Andrew Carnegie, and made Banker Ira Reynolds believe she was an illegitimate child of the Scotch millionaire. With him she deposited a bundle of securities alleged to be worth $5,000,000 and a note for half a million dollars bearing Carnegie's signature. A signed paper from Reynolds attesting the fact that he held $5,000,000 worth of securities in trust for her became her stock in trade, and she fleeced bankers and business men to the tune of one million dollars in money, and $150,000 worth of jewels in four years. In March, 1905, she was convicted, and is now serving a ten-year sentence in the Ohio State penitentiary. Thanksgiving, 1905, during my engagement at Keith's Theatre, I gave a performance for the prisoners in the county jail in Cleveland, and Mrs. Chadwick was to be entertained in her cell; but fifteen minutes before I was to show her a few conjuring tricks, she changed her mood, gave the jailer an argument, and refused to allow any one near her cell.

Of the army of women shoplifters, petty thieves, stool-pigeons for confidence men, etc., little need be said. Shoplifting seems to be the most common crime. Many women steal for mere wantonness, having no need of the articles or money. Kleptomania is a polite word for this offense, and, doubtless, there are cases of mental disorder and moral degeneracy which take this form.

The time-worn badger game, as it is called, is still frequently employed to fleece men. The confidence woman gets acquainted with some man of means, preferably a married man of family, and invites him to call at her apartments. She carries on her part of the flirtation to
“perfection”
till suddenly the doorbell rings, and in apparent fright she exclaims: “There comes my husband. He is furiously jealous and will kill you!”

The fictitious husband rushes in, a scene takes place, and the “husband” threatens to shoot or call in the police. Eventually, the matter is settled by the victim giving up a large sum of money rather than face a scandal. This is only one form of blackmail resorted to, to extort money, as the victim is often threatened with public exposé, etc. Pirates in petticoats frequently ply their trade on ocean and lake steamers. They are well dressed and ingratiate themselves with the passengers of both sexes, watching their opportunity to steal jewelry, or practise their threadbare confidence games.

A woman named Grace Mordaunt cleared many thousands of dollars in New York by occasionally advertising the following personal in the
Herald
: “Young widow, financially embarrassed wishes loan of $100 on a diamond ring worth twice as much. Address Box.”

Miss Mordaunt was beautiful and fascinating. She
would produce a genuine diamond ring, and go with her victim to a jeweler to have it priced. At his office she would receive her money, and ask him with tears not to wear or show her ring for a few days, but lock it up in his safe. She then takes the ring, wraps it up in tissue paper, puts it in an envelope, and hands it sealed to the victim, and leaves, promising to repay the money with interest in a few days. She never returns, and at length the victim opens the envelope to find a brass ring with a glass diamond worth about 25 cents.

While in Austria some years ago, I heard of a most remarkable adventuress who went under the name of Madame Clarice B. Her particular form of swindle was to get acquainted with young men of good family and wealth, and entangle them in her meshes, and get declarations of marriage from them. She would get all she could out of her poor dupe, and then notify the family of the “engagement.” The young man's parents would then be forced to buy her off with a large sum of money, when she would go to pastures new. But Madame Clarice met her Waterloo in Vienna. There she met an American student upon whom she worked her wiles even to the extent of going through a marriage ceremony with him. After a time she left him and went to Paris, but the adventuress who had broken so many hearts found her own touched at last. She was actually in love with her student husband whose face haunted her dreams. After a few days she returned to Vienna, sought him out, and confessed all, but threw herself on his mercy and love. The denouement, unusual in such cases, was that the couple were actually married, and today are living happily on the continent.

Many, many more incidents might be related of the
clever work of the fascinating woman criminal, but these should be sufficient to warn the unwary against trusting either their honor or their pocketbook to an unknown woman, no matter how beautiful.

THE BRACE GAME

Of all classes of criminals the professional gambler has probably played the most conspicuous part in fiction and melodrama. We all know the stage gambler, while the penny dreadful novels and storybooks are too often filled with descriptions of this kind of crime. The gambler of the stage and in the novel is but an exaggerated portrait of this type.

Gambling is the playing for money of games depending solely on chance, like roulette; or games of skill and chance like poker and other card games or billiards and the like. A gentleman may have the moral right to back his own opinion in a wager with money, and with true sportsman instinct stand success or defeat. Even a small stake at cards is dangerous, for it cultivates the habit of gambling, which may soon become a passion.

Gambling in itself is bad enough even when the game is square; but your professional gambler never plays the game that way. He is an expert with cards. His seemingly innocent shuffle of the pack gives him a full knowledge of where every card is located. He deals you a hand good enough to induce you to make dangerously high bets, but not high enough to win. He lures his victim by small winnings to destruction in the end. He uses cards so cleverly
marked on the back that he can read the values of your hand as well as if he were looking over your shoulder, and govern his play accordingly. In faro and roulette he uses mechanical devices for controlling absolutely the winning numbers, and so cheats his victim from beginning to end. When a gambler employs a fraudulent deck of cards or a cheating roulette wheel or faro-box it is called a “brace” game.

No novice can go up against a brace game with any hope of winning; he must lose. Even if the game were on the square the victim will invariably lose in the long run, for the percentage of chance is against him.

If the exposures, which I feel at liberty to make in this chapter, may warn the unwary and deter the youth of this land from the fascinations of the green cloth, I shall feel that my efforts have not been in vain.

Marked cards employed by gamblers are specially engraved packs of cards in which the usual decoration design of scrolls and flowers on the back, instead of being exactly identical on the fifty-two cards, is varied slightly for each of the high cards. This would not be noticed and cannot be detected without close examination, but it renders the back of the cards as legible to the gambler as the face. The turn of a leaf in the scroll work may mean that that card is the ace of diamonds, while a slightly different turn may mean the ace of hearts and so on.

With such a pack of cards the gambler has the poor dupe at his mercy. “Long cards” and strippers, as they are called, are special packs in which the high cards are slightly different in shape and width, enabling the gambler, for instance, with a single motion to take three of the aces out of a pack …

One of the most malicious little devices I have ever run across is sometimes called a vest-pock roulette wheel. It would seem that this must be square and that the player would have even a greater chance to win than on an ordinary wheel because there is only one zero. As a matter of fact, however, it is a fraud pure and simple, as the mechanism is so arranged that the pointer will stop on zero three times when it will stop on any other number once! So beware of the man with a little Monte Carlo in his pocket.

Among other things used by professional gamblers to cheat with are loaded dice which may be bought or made to order; adhesive palming cloth for palming cards, chips, dice, etc.; adhesive dice which almost defy detection; shaped dice which are not exact cubes; “brace” dice boxes; magnifying mirrors set in rings; shading boxes made to sew on inside of coat and used to shade or mark cards while the game is in progress; marked decks of cards, ring hold outs, bouncers for roulette wheels, cement for plugging dice, silver amalgam for loading dice, “brace” faro boxes, etc., etc. With such an equipment, united with years of experience and skill, what chance has any law-abiding citizen against the professional gambler? The reader does not need my secret of escaping from handcuffs to shake off the shackles of this alluring siren gambling.

CHEATING UNCLE SAM

Under this heading I shall group such crimes as counterfeiting and the kindred crimes of forgery and raising
notes, as well as smuggling. It is a serious matter to get into trouble with the Federal government. The criminal is pursued relentlessly, and the sentence when conviction follows the almost certain arrest is always a heavy one. For these reasons such crimes are usually attempted only by the boldest and most skilful criminals or by those whose positions of trust in government employ afford them special opportunities.

The three great crimes against any government (aside, of course, from actual treason) are counterfeiting its money, either gold, silver, or bills; evading its custom laws, or smuggling. Counterfeiting, which offers enormous rewards if successful, is frequently attempted—indeed, scarcely a month passes that does not see the appearance of some new and dangerous counterfeit of some United States bill. Notice is at once sent to all the banks by the authorities and often published in the newspapers, so that the public at large may be warned against the spurious bill in circulation.

Many years ago, when the art of engraving and plate making was in its infancy, the paper money in circulation was much more crude than today. Then it was comparatively easy for the counterfeiter to engrave just as good a bill as the government could produce; but now the matter is much more difficult, owing to the delicate and intricate work of the lathe and tool work and the special fibre paper upon which it is printed. The conditions of caution surrounding the government printing works make it almost impossible for an original plate to be stolen. The paper is made especially for this purpose and under strictest government supervision. In designing, lettering, and engraving the bills only artists of the foremost
professional standing are employed. Every banknote or greenback is truly a work of art, so that an exact counterfeit—one that will deceive even an ordinary business man accustomed to handle money—is each year more and more difficult to produce …

Genuine gold and silver coins are often tampered with. These schemes are known as “sweating,” “plugging,” and “filling.” For instance, a hundred gold ten-dollar pieces subject to an acid bath would lose perhaps $35 or $40 worth of their gold and remain unchanged in appearance. The coins are put in circulation again, and the gold which has been “sweated” off of them is easily extracted from the acid bath and sold. Coins are also robbed of precious metal by drilling a hole, the cavity being filled with an alloy and the filling covered with a light gold wash. Filling a coin is sawing it through the edge in two parts, scraping out the gold, and putting the two parts together again filled with some baser metal. Thomas Ballard was the first counterfeiter to successfully reproduce government fibre paper, which he did in 1870. The next year he and his gang were captured, but escaped from jail and found a hiding-place from which they continued to issue dangerous counterfeits. In 1873 his counterfeit $500 treasury note alarmed banks and government officials. Ballard was finally captured in his lair in Buffalo just as he was about to produce a counterfeit $5 bill of a Canadian bank. This bill, he boasted, was to have corrupted all Canada.

John Peter McCartney was the counterfeiter who successfully removed all the ink from genuine $1 bills so that he could secure government paper on which to print counterfeit bills of much higher denomination. He
made a fortune, so it is said, but was brought to book at last.