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THEY were known by their street names: Gopher Bill, Young Hope and Old Hope, Banjo Pete, and Mollie Matches, alias John Larney. In the 1880s, as today, criminals avoided their given names. Thomas Byrnes, the legendary police detective, brings to light a part of our society that has been a constant as our country has matured and technology has evolved. Byrnes, who fought as a Union Zouave during the First Battle of Bull Run, was raised in New York’s Five Points, which was considered the meanest tenement neighborhood of its day. Overcoming his sparse upbringing, Byrnes rose through the ranks of the New York City police from officer to inspector, then chief of detectives, and finally becoming police superintendent reporting to Commissioner, and future President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt.
In Professional Criminals of America, Byrnes describes a hierarchy within the criminal world, one that carries over during incarceration—the inevitable end for those who believe crime pays. In the first chapter, “Bank Burglars,” he draws a picture of the highest tier of criminal. Gopher Bill, Banjo Pete, and their nineteenth century counterparts possessed patience, intelligence, and mechanical knowledge. Coupling these traits with determination, Byrnes depicts a formidable adversary. He contrasts that with the attributes of a forger, who benefits from “education, refined habits.” And again with the highway robber, who requires “brute force and nerve” for success.
Byrnes’s bank burglar is attuned to developments in lock construction. As a new invention comes to market, those adept will acquire an example and study it until completely familiar with the strong and weak points. Store and safe burglars, a step below the bank burglar, operate mostly on weekends when they can afford extra moments to discern the intricacies of a vault combination. Confidence and banco men are known for their industriousness and “a good knowledge of human nature, and a fair amount of ingenuity.” For them, success depends on accurately assessing their victim’s greed.
Summing up, Byrnes notes, “From a petty sneak thief he may become one of a gang of pickpockets, and from a pickpocket, in course of time, may suddenly come to the front with distinction even as a first-class bank burglar.” So, all is not lost for the small time thief surviving on happenstance opportunity. The thief can aspire to advance in his ill-conceived profession of crime and ascend to shoplifter, then house thief, even store cracksman, and finally the pinnacle: bank burglar.
The descriptions of forgers and store breakers, steerers and stallers, horse sharpers and sawdust men found in Professional Criminals of America demonstrate Byrnes’s keen understanding of the individuals who became his lifelong quarry, those he dedicated his working life to neutralize, nemeses of society he swore to bring before justice. Byrnes was a student of human character, an early criminologist and behavioral profiler, the essence of a detective.
When Byrnes released Professional Criminals of America in 1886, he was on his way to becoming an icon of law enforcement. He created New York City’s modern detective bureau, a template for cities nationwide. His peers and subordinates credited him with the well-known “third degree”—thought to be a play on his last name and the most severe burn injury—mode of interrogation. They also acknowledged him with creating the “Rogues’ Gallery”—a wall of portraits of men and women—as a way for detectives to remain familiar with the unique facial features of their city’s crooks. Professional Criminals of America reflects Byrnes’s Rogues’ Gallery with photographs of the most dangerous career offenders operating in Gotham during the Gilded Age. Most interestingly, accompanying the gallery of faces, Byrnes illustrates the ruses and tricks employed by his criminals and gives us a flavor of their escapades. Written with a well-balanced and dry humor, Professional Criminals of America takes us back in time to sharpers and banco men—today’s con artists; blowers and breakers—the early safecrackers; and tools—now known as gang members and running partners.
Early in Professional Criminals of America, Byrnes puts his emphasis on nonviolent crime, acknowledging its economic impact on society in contrast with today’s news coverage that highlights violence. But near the end of Professional Criminals of America, he spends a few moments recounting the most infamous murders of his time and the subsequent fate of the guilty parties in the Tombs prison, New York City’s detention facility and gallows standing adjacent to Byrnes’s boyhood home of Five Points.
Byrnes concludes his narrative with a chapter that is prophetic, “Opium Habit and Its Consequences.” More than a century has passed since Byrnes wrote of the damage opium dependence instills. Early in my own career as a bank robbery investigator, I witnessed firsthand—weekly—addiction’s grip. What strikes me is the similarity in jargon of the 1880s and 1990s. Byrnes describes his addicts, or “dope fiends,” as “hitting the pipe,” vernacular almost identical to that of today’s “on the pipe.” Now, well into our third millennium, we watch as opium and opiate abuse spiral out of control.
Byrnes’s recollections of the backgrounds, crimes, and fates of America’s worst offenders are a tribute to his institutional knowledge and comprehension of the criminal underworld. The information contained in these pages is timeless; history that teaches. Here we are, 100 plus years later, and Professional Criminals of America still serves to instruct, acting as a “How-to Guide” for investigators and detectives. As I read through the pages, Superintendent Byrnes’s lawbreakers reminded me of those I encountered while responding to bank robberies and burglaries as a young FBI agent. Criminals of the top tier still live among us today.
R. SCOTT DECKER
Author of Recounting the Anthrax Attacks:
Terror, the Amerithrax Task Force, and the Evolution of Forensics in the FBI
Las Vegas, Nevada
January 2019
PREFACE.
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AS crimes against property are of so frequent occurrence in the cities and towns of this country, it was suggested to my mind that the publication of a book describing thieves ami their various ways of operating would be a great preventive against further depredations. Aware of the fact that there is nothing that professional criminals fear so much as identification and exposure, it is my belief that if men and women who make a practice of preying upon society were known to others besides detectives and frequenters of the courts, a check, if not a complete stop, would be put to their exploits. While the photographs of burglars, forgers, sneak thieves, and robbers of lesser degree are kept in police albums, many offenders are still able to operate successfully. But with their likenesses within reach of all, their vocation would soon become risky and unprofitable.
Experience has shown me, during the twenty-three years of my connection with the Police Department of the City of New York, and especially the period in which I have been in command of the Detective Bureau, that bankers, brokers, commercial and business men, and the public, were strangely ignorant concerning the many and ingenious methods resorted to by rogues in quest of plunder.
With the view of thwarting thieves, I have, therefore, taken this means of circulating their pictures, together with accurate descriptions of them, and interesting information regarding their crimes and methods, gathered from the most reliable sources. Many mysterious thefts are truthfully explained, and the names of the persons credited with committing them are revealed; but as information merely, without corroborative proof, is not evidence, it would be valueless in a legal prosecution. In the following pages will be found a vast collection of facts illustrative of the doings of celebrated robbers, and pains have been taken to secure, regardless of expense, excellent reproductions of their photographs, so that the law-breakers can be recognized at a glance. By consulting this book prosecuting officers and other officials will be able to save much time and expense in the identification of criminals who may fall into their hands. In the compilation of this work, information obtained from newspapers and police officials of other cities was of great assistance to me, but all the matter and data were verified before being used.
Hoping that this volume will serve as a medium in the prevention and detection of crime, I remain, respectfully,
THOMAS BYRNES.
NEW YORK, September, 1886.