The Autobiography of a Thief

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CHAPTER I.

Boyhood and Early Crime.


I have been a professional thief for more than twenty years. Half
of that time I have spent in state's prison, and the other half in
"grafting" in one form or another. I was a good pickpocket and a fairly
successful burglar; and I have known many of the best crooks in the
country. I have left the business for good, and my reasons will appear
in the course of this narrative. I shall tell my story with entire
frankness. I shall not try to defend myself. I shall try merely to tell
the truth. Perhaps in so doing I shall explain myself.

I was born on the east side of New York City in 1868, of poor but
honest parents. My father was an Englishman who had married an Irish
girl and emigrated to America, where he had a large family, no one of
whom, with the exception of myself, went wrong. For many years he was
an employee of Brown Brothers and Company and was a sober, industrious
man, and a good husband and kind father. To me, who was his favorite,
he was perhaps too kind. I was certainly a spoiled child. I remember
that when I was five years old he bought me a twenty-five dollar suit
of clothes. I was a vigorous, handsome boy, with red, rosy cheeks and
was not only the pet of my family, but the life of the neighborhood as
well.

At that time, which is as far back as I can remember, we were living
on Munro Street, in the Seventh Ward. This was then a good residential
neighborhood, and we were comfortable in our small, wooden house. The
people about us were Irish and German, the large Jewish emigration
not having begun yet. Consequently, lower New York did not have such
a strong business look as it has now, but was cleanly and respectable.
The gin-mills were fewer in number, and were comparat