Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 February 1875 — Professional Burglars in New York City. [ARTICLE]

Professional Burglars in New York City.

Tin; principal haunts of the professional “ cracksmen” of New York are in the Sixth and Eighth Wards, where, in the narrow and foul-smelling streets that lead to the river, they find congenial homes, or rather sojourning places, for your genuine burglar - rarely stays long in a single place. As soon as he has completed a job which seems likely to create trouble for him he migrates to some distant part of the city, or leaves it altogether, until he considers it safe to return. Formerly the most skillful of the craft were Englishmen, who had left their country for their country’s good—and.their own, too. Now the American can discount the foreign article. » Some of the “ neatest” jobs in the safe and bank line have been done by graduates of the metropolitan high schools of burglary. The English professionals ] used to be of the genuine Bill Sykes stamp, low-browed,, heavy-jawed scoundrels, who never enjoyed securing the “ swag” without knocking out the brains of the watchman. The American is altogether different in style, but is nevertheless just as dangerous when driven into a corner, as many a policeman and detective has good reason to know. They depend more upon science than violence, yet when there appears to be need of force they are not found wanting. Some of them are men of fair education and refined manners, capable of earning a good living in a square way. But criminals seem to be born as well as poets, and no amount of education appears to be of effect in making them honest. Contrary to popular belief, the professional burglar is rarely ever addicted to liquor. As a class they are abstemious, and some of them are thoroughly teetotal. They need clear heads and still tongues. The aristocratic bank-breaker affects kid gloves, broadcloth clothing and the opera, and has as thorough a contempt for what he calls “ a mean thief” as a Church of England Bishop has for a dissenting minister. His wife is always arrayed in purple and fine linen, and gorgeous in diamonds, and his children attend fashionable boarding-schools. The former is almost always privy to the affairs of her husband, and is sometimes an invaluable assistant in arranging the preliminary work of a difficult job. She can do the “ piping” as well if not better than a man, as she would hardly be suspected of burglarious purposes. She finds out the habits of the bank officers and the watchman; what time the latter enters and leaves the bank; whether there is a dog to be got rid of, and whether the adjacent buildings, if any are occupied by persons who would be apt to notice any unusual noises in the bank. Every point that is important is thor-oughly-known to the cracksman before the attempt is made. The children are, in nearly every case, ignorant of the antecedents and real character of their parents. We refer solely to the higher classes of criminals. They are sent away when not more than five or six years old to another city or into the country, where they are frequently visited by their mother. There is at present at a private and fashionable educational establishment for young ladies in this city a beautiful and talented girl of sixteen or seventeen years of age, the daughter of a notorious New York bank jobber, who seven years ago was tried for manslaughter, and was only saved by the liberal use of the money he had been hoarding for years. It must have cost him SBO,OOO to keep his neck out of the halter. Of this and other facts concerning her father the girl has not the slightest knowledge. To her he is a prosperous lawyer, moving in the best social circles, and she looks eagerly forward to the time when she shall return to that home for good which she has never entered half a dozep times since she can remember. Instead of that she will probably he taken to Europe by her mother, where her accomplishments and money may find her a husband. If not, she will return to find her father “ retired from business” and settled in Boston, Philadelphia or Baltimore —that is, if he is lucky enough to keep out of the hands of the police all that time. The lower grade of house-tireakers generally consort in the saloons along Greenwich street and in the “ dives” in that net of thoroughfares on the west side running from the river toward Broadway. They are for the most part a ruffianly set. Bank-breaking and safe-opening are above their capabilities. They break into private houses and carry away plate and spoons, and everything else of a portable character which is of value, ready at all times to kill or maim anyone interfering with them.— Boston Cotnmercial Bulletin.