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 Courts criminals, and the Camorra / 
 
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COURTS, CRIMINALS 
 AND THE CAMORRA 
 
 BY 
 
 ARTHUR TRAIN 
 
 Formerly Assistant District Attorney, New York County 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1912 
 
COPTHIQHT, 1912, BT 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 Published September, 1912 
 
To 
 CHAELES ALBERT PERKINS 
 
 OF THB N£W YOBE BAB 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I.— COURTS 
 
 I. The Pleasant Fiction of the Presump- 
 tion OP Innocence 3 
 
 II. Preparing a Criminal Case for Trial 27 
 
 III. Sensationalism and Jury Trials . . 53 
 
 II.— CRIMINALS 
 
 IV. Why Do Men Kill? 67 
 
 V. Detectives and Others 86 
 
 VI. Detectives Who Detect 112 
 
 III.— THE CAMORRA 
 
 VII. The Camorra in Italy 143 
 
 VIII. An American Lawyer at Viterbo . . 184 
 
 IX. The Mala Vita in America .... 214 
 
COURTS 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE PLEASANT FICTION OF THE PRESUMPTION 
 OF INNOCENCE 
 
 There was a great to-do some years ago in the city 
 of New York over an ill-omened young person, Duffy 
 by name, who, falling into the bad graces of the po- 
 lice, was most incontinently dragged to head-quarters 
 and "mugged" without so much as "By your leave, 
 sir," on the part of the authorities. Having been 
 photographed and measured (in most humiliating 
 fashion) he was turned loose with a gratuitous warn- 
 ing to behave himself in the future and see to it that 
 he did nothing which might gain him even more 
 invidious treatment. 
 
 Now, although many thousands of equally harm- 
 less persons had been similarly treated, this particu- 
 lar outrage was made the occasion of a vehement 
 protest to the mayor of the city by a certain mem- 
 ber of the judiciary, who pointed out that such 
 things in a civilized community were shocking be- 
 yond measure, and called upon the mayor to remove 
 the commissioner of poUce and all his staff of 
 deputy commissioners for openly violating the law 
 which they were sworn to uphold. But, the com- 
 missioner of police, who has sometimes enforced 
 the penal statutes in a way that has made him un- 
 
4 THE PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE 
 
 popular with machine politicians, saw nothing wrong 
 in what he had done, and, what was more, said so 
 most outspokenly. The judge said, "You did," and 
 the commissioner said, "I didn't." Specifically, the 
 judge was complaining of what had been done to 
 Duffy, but more generally he was charging the po- 
 lice with despotism and oppression and with sys- 
 tematically disregarding the sacred liberties of the 
 citizens which it was their duty to protect. 
 
 Accordingly the mayor decided to look into the 
 matter for himself, and after a lengthy investigation 
 came to the alleged conclusion that the "mugging" 
 of Duffy was a most reprehensible thing and that all 
 those who were guilty of having any part therein 
 should be instantly removed from office. He, there- 
 fore, issued a pronunciamento to the commissioner 
 demanding the official heads of several of his sub- 
 ♦ordinates, which order the commissioner politely 
 declined to obey. The mayor thereupon removed 
 him and appointed a successor, ostensibly for the 
 purpose of having in the office a man who should 
 conduct the police business of the city with more re- 
 gard for the liberties of the inhabitants thereof. The 
 judge who had started the rumpus expressed him- 
 self as very much pleased and declared that now^at 
 last a new era had dawned wherein the government 
 was to be administered with a due regard for law. 
 
 Now, curiously enough, although the judge had 
 demanded the removal of the commissioner on the 
 groimd that he had violated the law and been guilty 
 of tyrannous and despotic conduct, the mayor had 
 
THE PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE 5 
 
 ousted him not for pursuing an illegal course in ar- 
 resting and "mugging" a presumptively innocent 
 man (for Ulegal it most undoubtedly was), but for 
 inefficiency and maladministration in his department. 
 Said the mayor in his written opinion: 
 
 "After thinking over this matter with the greatest care, 
 I am led to the conclusion that as mayor of the city of New 
 York I should not order the police to stop taking photographs 
 of people arrested and accused of crime or who have been 
 indicted by grand juries. That grave injustice may occur 
 the Duffy case has demonstrated, but I feel that it is not the 
 taking of the photograph that has given cause to the injustice, 
 but the inefficiency and maladministration of the police de- 
 partment, etc." 
 
 In other words, the mayor set the seal of his official 
 approval upon the very practice which caused the 
 injustice to Duffy. "Mugging" was all right, so 
 long as you "mugged" the right persons. 
 
 The situation thus outlined is one of more than 
 pacing interest. Whatever the merely political out- 
 come may be, and it may be far-reaching, a sensitive 
 point in our governmental nervous system has been 
 touched and a condition tmcovered that sooner or 
 later must be diagnosed and cured. 
 
 For the police have no right to arrest and photo- 
 graph a citizen unconvicted of crime, since it is con- 
 trary to law. And it is ridiculous to assert that the 
 very guardians of the law may violate it so long as 
 they do so judiciously and do not molest the Duffys. 
 The trouble goes deeper than that. 
 
 The truth is that we are up against that most deli- 
 
6 THE PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE 
 
 cate of situations, the concrete adjustment of a theo- 
 retical individual right to a practical necessity. The 
 same difficulty has always existed and will always 
 continue to exist whenever emergencies requiring 
 prompt and decisive action arise or conditions obtain 
 that must be handled effectively without too much 
 discussion. It is easy while sitting on a piazza with 
 your cigar to recognize the rights of your fellow-men, 
 but if you were starving on the high seas in an open 
 boat — ! You may assert most vigorously the right 
 of the citizen to immimity from arrest without legal 
 cause, but if you saw a seedy character sneaking 
 down a side street at three o'clock in the morning, 
 his pockets bulging with jewelry and silver — ! Que 
 voulez vous, m'sieu? Would you have the police- 
 man on post insist on the fact that a burglary had 
 been committed being estabHshed beyond perad- 
 venture before arresting the suspect, who in the 
 meantime would undoubtedly escape? Of course, 
 the worthy officer sometimes does this, but his con- 
 duct in that case becomes the subject of an investiga- 
 tion on the part of his superiors. In fact, the rules 
 of the New York police department require him to 
 arrest all persons carrying bags in the small hours 
 who cannot give a satisfactory accovmt of themselves. 
 Yet there is no such thing imder the laws of the State 
 as a right "to arrest on suspicion." No citizen may 
 be arrested ^vmder the statutes unless a crime has 
 actually been committed. Thus,"the poUce regulations 
 dehberately compel every officer either to violate the 
 law or to be made the subject of charges for dere- 
 
THE PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE 7 
 
 liction of duty. A confusing state of things, truly, to 
 a man who wants to do his duty by himself and by 
 his fellow-citizens! 
 
 The present author once wrote a book dealing 
 with the practical administration of criminal justice, 
 in which the unlawfulness of arrest on mere "sus- 
 picion" was discussed at length and given a prom- 
 inent place. But when the time came for pubUca- 
 tion that portion of it was omitted at the earnest 
 solicitation of certain of the authorities on the ground 
 that as such arrests were absolutely necessary for 
 the enforcement of the criminal law a pubUc exposi- 
 tion of their illegality would do infinite harm. Now, 
 as it seems, the time has come when the facts, for 
 one reason or another, must be faced. The diffi- 
 culty does not end, however, with "arrest on sus- 
 picion," "the third degree," "mugging," or their 
 allied abuses. It really goes to the root of our whole 
 theory of the administration of the criminal law. Is 
 it possible that on final analysis we may find that 
 our enthusiastic insistence upon certain of the sup- 
 posedly fundamental liberties of the individual has 
 led us into a condition of legal hypocrisy vastly less 
 desirable than the frank attitude of our continental 
 neighbors toward such subjects? 
 
 The Massachusetts Constitution of 1785 concludes 
 with the now famous words: "To the end that this 
 may be a government of laws and not pf men." That 
 is the essence of the spirit of American government. 
 Our forefathers had arisen and thrown off the yoke 
 of England and her intolerable system of penal gov- 
 
8 THE PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE 
 
 emment, in which an accused had no right to tes- 
 tify in his own behalf and under which he could be 
 hung for stealing a sheep. " Liberty ! " " Liberty or 
 death!" That was the note ringing in the minds 
 and mouths of the signers of the Declaration and 
 framers of the Constitution. That is the popular 
 note to-day of the Fourth of July orator and of the 
 Memorial Day address. This liberty was to be 
 guaranteed by laws in such a way that it was never 
 to be curtailed or violated. No mere man was to 
 be given an opportunity to tamper with it. The in- 
 dividual was to be protected at all costs. No king, 
 or sheriff, or judge, or ofl&cer was to lay his finger 
 on a free man save at his peril. If he did, the free 
 man might immediately have his "law" — "have 
 the law on him," as the good old expression was — 
 for no king or sheriff was above the law. In fact, 
 we were so energetic in providing safeguards for the 
 individual, even when a wrong-doer, that we paid 
 very little attention to the effectiveness of kings or 
 sheriffs or what we had substituted for them. And 
 so it is to-day. What candidate for office, what 
 silver-tongued orator or senator, what demagogue 
 or preacher could hold his audience or capture a 
 vote if, when it came to a question of liberty, he 
 should lift up his voice in behalf of the rights of the 
 majority as against the individual? The Republi- 
 can party — "The Grand Old Party of Liberty!" 
 The Democratic party — "The Party of Liberty!" 
 The Socialist-Labor party — " of Liberty." " Liberty 
 forever!" 
 
THE PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE 9 
 
 Accordingly in devising our laws we have pro- 
 vided in every possible way for the freedom of the 
 citizen from all interference on the part of the 
 authorities. No one may be stopped, interrogated, 
 examined, or arrested unless a crime has been com- 
 mitted. Every one is presumed to be innocent until 
 shown to be guilty by the verdict of a jiuy. No 
 one's premises may be entered or searched without 
 a warrant which the law renders it difficult to ob- 
 tain. Every accused has the right to testify in his 
 own behalf, like any other witness. The fact that 
 he has been held for a crime by a magistrate and 
 indicted by a grand jury places him at not the 
 slightest disadvantage so far as defending himself 
 against the charge is concerned, for he must be proven 
 guilty heyond any reasonable doubt. These illustra- 
 tions of the jealousy of the law for the rights of citi- 
 zens might be multiplied to no inconsiderable extent. 
 Further, ovu* law allows a defendant convicted of 
 crime to appeal to the highest courts, whereas if he 
 be acquitted the people or State have no right of 
 appeal at all. 
 
 Without dwelling further on the matter it is enough 
 to say that in general the State constitutions, their 
 general laws, or penal statutes provide that a person 
 who is accused or suspected of crime must be pre- 
 sumed innocent and treated accordingly imtil his gmlt 
 has been affirmatively established in a jmy trial; 
 that meantime he must not be confined or detained 
 unless a crime has in fact been committed and there 
 is at least reasonable cause to believe that he has 
 
10 THE PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE 
 
 committed it; and, further, that if arrested he must 
 be given an immediate opportunity to secure bail, to 
 have the advice of counsel, and must in no way be 
 compelled to give any evidence against himself. So 
 much for the law. It is as plain as a pikestaff. It 
 is printed in the books in words of one syllable. So 
 far as the law is concerned we have done our best 
 to perpetuate the theories of those who, fearing that 
 they might be arrested without a hearing, trans- 
 ported for trial, and convicted in a king's court be- 
 fore a king's judge for a crime they knew nothing 
 of, insisted on "liberty or death." They had had 
 enough of kings and their ways. Hereafter they were 
 to have "a government of laws and not of inen." 
 
 But the unfortimate fact remains that all laws, 
 however perfect, must in the end be administered by 
 imperfect men. There is, alas! no such thing as a 
 government of laws and not of men. You may have 
 a government more of laws and less of men, or vice 
 versa, but you cannot have an auto-administration 
 of the Golden Rule. Sooner or later you come to a 
 man — ^in the White House, or on a wool sack, or at a 
 desk in an ofl&ce, or in a blue coat and brass buttons — 
 and then, to a very considerable extent, the question 
 of how far ours is to be a government of laws or of 
 men depends upon him. Generally, so far as he is 
 concerned, it is going to be of man, for every official 
 finds that the letter of the law works an injustice 
 many times out of a hundred. If he is worth his sal- 
 ary he will try to temper justice with mercy. If he 
 is human he will endeavor to accomplish justice a^ he 
 
THE PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE 11 
 
 sees it so long as the law can be stretched to accom- 
 modate the case. Thus, inevitably there is a conflict 
 between the theory of the law and its appUcation. It 
 is the human element in the administration of the 
 law that enables lawyers to get a living. It is usually 
 not difficult to teU what the law is; the puzzle is how 
 it is going to be appHed in any individual case. How 
 it is going to be applied depends very largely upon 
 the practical side of the matter and the exigencies 
 of existing conditions. 
 
 It is pretty hard to apply inflexibly laws over a 
 hundred years old. It is equally hard to police a 
 city of a nuUion or so polyglot inhabitants with a 
 due regard to their theoretic constitutional rights. 
 But suppose in addition that these theoretic rights 
 are entirely theoretic and fly in the face of the laws 
 of nature, experience, and common sense? What 
 then? As the missionary said, "The cannibals are 
 coming behind, there is a Uon in front, there are 
 sharks in the water, I can't swim anyway — what in 
 hell am I to do?" What is a poKce commissioner to 
 do who has either got to make an illegal arrest or 
 let a crook get away, who must violate the rights of 
 men illegally detained by outrageously "mugging" 
 them or egregiously fail to have a record of the pro- 
 fessional criminals in his bailiwick? He does just 
 what all of us do when we are "up against it," — ^he 
 "takes a chance." But in the case of the poUce the 
 thing is so necessary that there ceases practically 
 to be any "chance" about it. They have got to pre- 
 vent crime and arrest criminals. If they fail they 
 
12 THE PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE 
 
 are out of a job, and others more capable or less 
 scrupulous take their places. The fundamental law 
 qualifying aU systems is that of necessity. You can't 
 let professional crooks carry ofif a voter's sUverware 
 simply because the voter, being asleep, is unable in- 
 stantly to demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt 
 that his silver has been stolen. You can't permit 
 burglars to drag sacks of loot through the streets 
 of the city at 4 a. m. simply because they are pre- 
 sumed to be innocent imtil proven guilty. And 
 if "arrest on suspicion" were not permitted, de- 
 manded ,by the pubUc, and required by the poHce 
 ordinances, away would go the crooks and off would 
 go the silverware, the town would be full of "leather 
 snatchers" and "strong-arm men," respectable citi- 
 zens would be afraid to go out o' nights, and liberty 
 would degenerate into license. That is the point. We 
 Americans, or at least the newer ones of us, have a 
 fixed idea that "liberty" means the right to steal 
 apples from our neighbor's orchard without inter- 
 ference. Now, somewhere or other, there has got 
 to be a switch and a strong arm to keep us in order, 
 and the switch and arm must not wait until the apples 
 are stolen and eaten before getting busy. If we come 
 climbing over the fence sweating apples at every 
 pore, is Farmer Jones to go and count his apples 
 before grabbing us? 
 
 The most presumptuous of all presumptions is this 
 "presumption of innocence." It really doesn't ex-, 
 ist, save in the mouths of judges and in the pages of 
 law books. Yet as much to-do is made about it as 
 
THE PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE 13 
 
 if it were a living legal principle. Every judge in a 
 criminal case is required to charge the jury in form 
 or substance somewhat as follows: "The defendant 
 is presumed to be innocent imtil that presumption 
 is removed by competent evidence." . . . "This 
 presumption is his property, remaining with him 
 throughout the trial and until rebutted by the 
 verdict of the jury." . . . "The jury has no right 
 to consider the fact that the defendant stands at 
 the bar accused of a crime by an indictment found 
 by the grand jury." Shades of Sir Henry Hawkins! 
 Does the judge expect that they are actually to 
 swallow that? Here is a jury sworn "to a true 
 verdict find" in the case of an ugly looking cus- 
 tomer at the bar who is charged with knocking 
 down an old man and stealing his watch. The old 
 man — an apostoUc looking octogenarian — ^is sitting 
 right over there where the jvuy can see him. One 
 look at the plaintiff and one at the accused and 
 the jury may be heard to mutter, "He's guilty, — 
 all right!" 
 
 "Presumed to be umocent?" Why, may I ask? 
 Don't the jury and everybody else know that this 
 good old man would never, save by mistake, accuse 
 anybody falsely of crime? Innocence! Why, the 
 natural and inevitable presumption is that the de- 
 fendant is guilty ! The human mind works intuitively 
 by comparison and experience. We assume or pre- 
 sume with considerable confidence that parents love 
 their children, that all college presidents are great 
 and good men, and that wild bulls are dangerous 
 
14 THE PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE 
 
 animals. We may be wrong. But it is up to the 
 other feUow to show us the contrary. 
 
 Now, if out of a clear sky Jones accuses Robinson 
 of being a thief we know by experience that the 
 chances are largely in favor of Jones's accusation 
 being well founded. People as a rule don't go rush- 
 ing around charging each other with being crooks 
 imless they have some reason for it. Thus, at the 
 very beginning the law flies in the face of probabil- 
 ities when it teUs us that a man accused of crime must 
 be presumed to be innocent. In point of fact, what- 
 ever presumption there is (and this varies with the 
 circumstances) is aU the other way, greater or less 
 depending upon the particular attitude of mind and 
 experience of the individual. 
 
 This natural presumption of guilt from the mere 
 fact of the charge is rendered aU the more likely by 
 reason of the uncharitable readiness with which we 
 beUeve evil of our fellows. How unctuously we re- 
 peat some hearsay bit of scandal. "I suppose you 
 have heard the report that Deacon Smith has stolen 
 the church fvmds?" we say to our friends with a sen- 
 tentious sigh — the outward sign of an invisible satis- 
 faction. Deacon Smith after the money-bag? Ha! 
 ha! Of course, he's guilty! These deacons are al- 
 ways guilty! And in a few minutes Deacon Smith 
 is ruined forever, although the fact of the matter is 
 that he was but counting the money in the collection- 
 plate. This willingness to believe the worst of others 
 is a matter of common knowledge and of historical 
 and literary record. "The evil that men do hves 
 
THE PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE 15 
 
 after them — " It might well have been put, "The 
 evil men are said to have done Hves forever." How- 
 ever unfair, this is a psychologic condition which 
 plays an important part in rendering the presump- 
 tion of innocence a gross absurdity. 
 
 But let us press the history of Jones and Robinson 
 a step further. The next event in the latter's crim- 
 inal history is his appearance in court before a magis- 
 trate. Jones produces his evidence and calls his wit- 
 nesses. Robinson, through his learned counsel, cross- 
 examines them and then summons his own witnesses 
 to prove his innocence. The proceeding may take 
 several days or perhaps weeks. Briefs are submitted. 
 The magistrate considers the testimony at great 
 length and finally decides that he beheves Robinson 
 guilty and must hold him for the action of the grand 
 jury. You might now, it would perhaps seem, have 
 some reason for suspecting that Robinson was not 
 all that he should be. But no! He is still presimied 
 in the eyes of the law, and theoretically in the eyes 
 of his fellows, to be as innocent as a babe unborn. 
 And now the grand jury take up and sift the evidence 
 that has already been gone over by the police judge. 
 They, too, call witnesses and take additional testi- 
 mony. They likewise are convinced of Robinson's 
 guilt and straightway hand down an indictment ac- 
 cusing Tn'm of the crime. A bench warrant issues. 
 The defendant is run to earth and ignominiously 
 haled to court. But he is still presumed to be inno- 
 cent! Does not the law say so? And is not this a 
 "government of laws"? Finally, the district attor- 
 
16 THE PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE 
 
 ney, who is not looking for any more work than is 
 absolutely necessary, investigates the case and be- 
 gins to prepare it for trial. As the facts develop 
 themselves Robinson's guilt becomes more and more 
 clear. The vmfortunate defendant is given any op- 
 portunity he may desire to explain away the charge, 
 but to no purpose. .^ 
 
 The district attorney knows Robinson is guilty, 
 so does everybody else, including Robinson, At last 
 this presumably innocent man is brought to the bar 
 for trial. The jury scan his hang-dog countenance 
 upon which guilt is plainly written. They contrast 
 his appearance with that of the honest Jones. They 
 know he has been accused, held by a magistrate, in- 
 dicted by a grand jury, and that his case, after care- 
 ful scrutiny, has been pressed for trial by the public 
 prosecutor. Do they really presume him innocent? 
 Not much! They presume him guilty. And if by 
 any chance Robinson puts in any defence, they re- 
 quire him, as a practical matter, to prove himself 
 innocent. "So soon as I see him come through dot 
 leetle door in the back of the room, then I know he's 
 guilty!" as the foreman said in the old story. What 
 good does the presumption of innocence, so called, 
 do for the miserable Robinson? None whatever 
 — save perhaps to console him in the long days pend- 
 ing his trial. But such a legal hypocrisy could never 
 have deceived anybody. How much better it would 
 be to cast aside all such cant and frankly admit that 
 the attitude of the continental law toward the man 
 under arrest is founded upon common sense and the 
 
THE PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE 17 
 
 experience of mankind. If he is the wrong man it 
 should not be difficult for him to demonstrate the 
 fact. At any rate circumstances are against him, 
 and he should be ready to explain them away if he can. 
 The fact of the matter is, that in dealing with 
 practical conditions, poUce methods differ very little 
 in different countries. The authorities may perhaps 
 keep considerably more detailed and obvious "tabs" 
 on us in Germany and Russia than in the United 
 States, but if we are once caught in a compromising 
 position we experience about the same treatment 
 wherever we happen to be. In France (and how the 
 apostles of Uberty condemn the iniquity of the ad- 
 ministration of criminal justice in that coimtry!) the 
 suspect or undesirable receives a pohte oflBcial call 
 or note, in which he is invited to leave the locaHty 
 as soon as convenient. In New York he is arrested 
 by a plain-clothes man, yanked down to Mulberry 
 Street for the night, and next afternoon is thrust down 
 the gangplank of a just departing Fall River liner. 
 Many an inspector (without mentioning names) has 
 earned unstinted praise (even from the New York 
 Evening Post) by "clearing New York of crooks" or 
 having a sort of "round-up" of suspicious characters 
 whom, after proper identification, he has ejected from 
 the city by the shortest and quickest possible route. 
 Yet in the case of every person thus arrested and 
 driven out of the town he has imdoubtedly violated 
 constitutional rights and taken the law into his own 
 hands. What crimes are committed in the name of 
 law, Liberty! 
 
18 THE PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE 
 
 What redress can a penniless tramp secure against 
 a stout inspector of police able and willing to spend 
 a considerable sum of money in his own defence, and 
 with the entire force ready and eager to get at the 
 tramp and put him out of business? He swallows 
 his pride, if he has any, and ruefully slinks out of 
 town for a period of enforced abstinence from the 
 joys of metropolitan existence. Yet who shall say 
 that, in spite of the fact that it is a theoretic out- 
 rage upon liberty, this cleaning out of the city is not 
 highly desirable? One or two comparatively inno- 
 cent men may be caught in the ruck, but they 
 generally manage to intimate to the police that the 
 latter have "got them wrong" and duly make their 
 escape. The others resume their tramp from city to 
 city, clothed in the presumption of their innocence. 
 
 Since the days of the Doges or of the Spanish In- 
 quisition there has never been anything like the 
 morning inspection of arrested suspects at the New 
 York poKce head-quarters.* One by one the vmfort- 
 ;mate persons arrested during the previous night 
 (although not charged with any crime) are pointed 
 out to the assembled detective force, who scan them 
 from beneath black velvet masks in order that 
 they themselves may not be recognized when they 
 meet again on Broadway or the darker side streets 
 of the city. Each prisoner is described and his char- 
 acter and past performances are rehearsed by the 
 inspector or head of the bureau. He is then meas- 
 ured, "mugged," and, if lucky, turned loose. What 
 
 * Now abolished. 
 
THE PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE 19 
 
 does his liberty amount to or his much- vaunted legal 
 rights if the city is to be made safe? Yet why does 
 not some apostle of liberty raise his voice and cry 
 aloud concerning the wrong that has been done? 
 Are not the rights of a beggar as sacred as those of 
 a bishop? Yea, verily, and the statutes say plainly 
 and have said plainly for years that no one shall be 
 arrested unless a crime has been committed. 
 
 One of the most sacred rights guaranteed to those 
 of us who can afford to pay for it under the law is 
 that of not being compelled to give evidence against 
 ourselves or to testify to anything which might de- 
 grade or incriminate us. "I'se not compelled to dis- 
 criminate against myself!" as the old darkey, who 
 knew his rights very well, said. Now, this is all very 
 fine for the chap who has his lawyer at his elbow or 
 has had some similar previous experience. He may 
 wisely shut up like a clam and set at defiance the 
 tortures of the third degree. But how about the poor 
 fellow arrested on suspicion of having committed, a 
 murder, who has never heard of the legal provision in 
 question, or, if he has, is cajoled or threatened into 
 "answering one or two questions"? Few poUce of- 
 ficers take the trouble to warn those whom they 
 arrest that what they say may be used against them. 
 What is the use? Of course, when they testify later 
 at the trial they inevitably begin their testimony with 
 the stereotyped phrase, "I first warned the defendant 
 that anything which he said would be used against 
 him. ' ' If they did warn him they probably whispered 
 it or mumbled it so that he didn't hear what they 
 
20 THE PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE 
 
 said, or, in any event, whether they said it or not, 
 half a dozen of them probably took him into a back 
 room and, having set him with his back against the 
 wall, threatened and swore at him until he told them 
 what he knew, or thought he knew, and perhaps con- 
 fessed his crime. When the case comes to trial the 
 police give the impression that the accused quietly 
 summoned them to his cell to make a voluntary 
 statement. The defendant denies this, of coiu-se, but 
 the evidence goes in and the harm has been done. 
 No doubt the methods of the inquisition are in vogue 
 the world over under similar conditions. Everybody 
 knows that a statement by the accused immediatiely 
 upon his arrest is usually the most important evi- 
 dence that can be secured in any case. It is a police 
 officer's duty to secure one if he can do so by legiti- 
 mate means. It is his custom to secure one by any 
 means in his power. As his oath, that such a state- 
 ment was voluntary, makes it ipso facto admissible 
 as evidence, the statutes providing that a defendant 
 cannot be compelled to give evidence against himself 
 are practically nullified. 
 
 The beneficent provisions to be found in most 
 codes of criminal procedure, and particularly ia that 
 of the State of New York, while highly valuable under 
 some circumstances, are of no avail to a defendant 
 who has never heard of them. These are to the effect 
 that the police must convey a message free of charge 
 to the family or lawyer of every person arrested, that 
 each prisoner is entitled as matter of law to a reason- 
 able delay before being compelled to submit to a 
 
THE PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE 21 
 
 hearing, that he has the right to the services of coun- 
 sel, and the further right to have a stenographic re- 
 port of the evidence taken before the magistrate. 
 The ordinary petty criminal is arrested without a 
 warrant, often illegally, hustled to the nearest police 
 court, put through a species of examination com- 
 posed largely of invective and assertion on the part 
 of the officer, found guilty, and "sent away" to the 
 Island, without lawyer, adjournment, or notice to 
 his family. "Off with his head!" — ^just like that! 
 He isn't presumed to be innocent at all. The "cop" 
 teUs him ^" to shut his mouth or he will knock his 
 block off." "I caught this feller doin' so and so! 
 He's a lazy loafer, judge," he says to the magistrate. 
 The latter takes a look at the defendant, concludes 
 that the officer is right, and off goes the prisoner to 
 the workhouse. 
 
 When it comes to the more important cases the 
 accused is usually put through some sort of an inquisi- 
 torial process by the captain at the station-house. 
 If he is not very successful at getting anything out of 
 the prisoner the latter is turned over to the sergeant 
 and a couple of officers who can use methods ofa 
 more urgent character. If the prisoner is arrested by 
 head-quarters detectives, various efficient devices to 
 compel him to "give up what he knows" may be 
 used — such as depriving him of food and sleep, plac- 
 ing him in a cell with a "stool-pigeon" who will tiy 
 to worm a confession out of him, and the usual moral 
 suasion of a heart-to-heart (!) talk in the back room 
 with the inspector. 
 
22 THE PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE 
 
 This is the darker side of the picture of practical 
 government. It is needless to say that the poUce do 
 not usually suggest the various safeguards and privi- 
 leges which the law accords to defendants thus ar- 
 rested, but the writer is free to confess that, save in 
 exceptional cases, he beheves the rigors of the so- 
 called third degree to be greatly exaggerated. Fre- 
 quently in dealing with rough men rough methods 
 are used, but considering the multitude of offenders, 
 and the thousands of police officers, none of whom 
 have been trained in a school of gentleness, it is sur- 
 prising that severer treatment is not met with on the 
 part of those who nm foul of the criminal law. The 
 ordinary "cop" tries to do his duty as effectively as 
 he can. With the average citizen gruffness and rough- 
 ness go a long way in the assertion of authority. 
 Policemen cannot have the manners of dancing- 
 masters. The writer is not quarrelling with the con- 
 duct of pohce officers. On the contrary, the point he 
 is trying to make is that in the task of pohcing a big 
 city, the rights of the individual must indubitably 
 suffer to a certain extent if the rights of the multitude 
 are to be properly protected. We can make too much 
 of small injustices and petty incivihties. PoUce busi- 
 ness is not gentle business. The officers are trying 
 to prevent you and me from being knocked on the 
 head some dark night or from being chloroformed in 
 our beds. Ten thousand men are trying to do a 
 thirty-thousand-man job. 
 
 The struggle to keep the peace and put down crime 
 is a hard one anjrwhere. It requires a strong arm 
 
THE PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE 23 
 
 that cannot show too punctilious a regard for theo- 
 retical rights when prompt decisions have to be made 
 and equally prompt action taken. The thieves and 
 gun men have got to be driven out. Suspicious char- 
 acters have got to be locked up. Somehow or other 
 a record must be kept of professional criminals and 
 persons likely to be active in law-breaking. These 
 are necessities in every civilized country. They are 
 necessities here. Society employs the same methods 
 of seK-protection the world over. No one presimaes 
 a person charged with crime to be imiocent, either ia 
 Delhi, Pekin, Moscow, or New York. Under proper 
 circumstances we beUeve him guilty. When he comes 
 to be tried the jmy consider the evidence, and if they 
 are pretty sure he is guilty they convict him. The 
 doctrine of .reasonable doubt is almost as much of a 
 fiction as that of the presumption of umocence. 
 From the time a man is arrested until arraignment he 
 is quizzed and interrogated with a view to inducing 
 him to admit his offence or give some evidence that 
 may help convict him. Logically, why should not a 
 person charged with a crime be obHged to give what 
 explanation he can of the affair? Why should he have 
 the privilegeof silence? Doesn't he owe a dutyto the 
 pubUc the same as any other witness? If he is inno- 
 cent he has nothing to fear; if he is guilty — away with 
 him! The French have no false ideas about such 
 things and at the same time they have a high regard 
 for Uberty. They merely recognize the fact that there 
 is a point at which the interest of the pubHc and its 
 liberty is bound to conflict with the interest of the 
 
24 THE PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE 
 
 individual and his freedom to do as he likes. And we 
 instinctively recognize this, too, just as everybody 
 does. We merely cheat ourselves into thinking that 
 our liberty is something different from French Uberty 
 because we have a lot of laws upon our statute books 
 that are there only to be disregarded and would have 
 to be repealed instantly if enforced. 
 
 Take, for instance, the celebrated provision of the 
 penal laws that the failure of an accused to testify 
 in his own behalf shall not be taken against him. 
 Such a doctrine flies in the face of human nature. If 
 a man sits silent when witnesses under oath accuse 
 him of a crime it is an inevitable inference that he 
 has nothing to say — ^that no explanation of his would 
 explain. The records show that the vast majority 
 of accused persons who do not avail themselves of the 
 opportunity to testify are convicted. Thus, the law 
 which permits a defendant to testify in reality com- 
 pels him to testify, and a much-invoked doctrine of 
 hberty turns out to be a privilege in name only. In 
 France or America alike a man accused of crime 
 sooner or later has to tell what he knows — or take his 
 medicine. It makes little difference whether he does 
 so under the legalized examination of a "juge d'in- 
 struction" in Paris or under the quasi- voluntary in- 
 terrogations of an assistant district attorney or police 
 inspector in New York. It is six of one and half a 
 dozen of the other if at his trial in France he remains 
 mute under examination or in America refrains from 
 availing himself of the privilege of testifying in his 
 own behalf. 
 
THE PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE 25 
 
 Thus, we are reluctantly forced to the conclusion 
 that all human institutions have their limitations, 
 and that, however theoretically perfect a government 
 of laws may be, it must be administered by men 
 whose chief regard will not be the ideaUzation of a 
 theory of hberty so much as an immediate solution 
 of some concrete problem. And, of course, we have 
 known this all along, but instead of doing away with 
 impossible laws we have preferred to have prohibi- 
 tion on Main Street and free Uquor at the hotel side 
 doors, closed Sundays on the statute books and a 
 wide-open town in practice, immunity from arrest 
 in theory under cover of the agreeable delusion that 
 America is the freest country in the world, and in 
 reality the same situation that exists in continental 
 countries. 
 
 Not that the matter, after all, is particularly im- 
 portant to most of us, but laws which exist only to 
 be broken create a disrespect and disregard for law 
 which may ultimately be dangerous. It would be 
 perfectly simple for the legislature to say that a citi- 
 zen might be arrested under circumstances tending to 
 cause a reasonable suspicion, even if he had not com- 
 mitted a crime, and it would be quite easy to pass a 
 statute providing that the commissioner of pohce 
 might "mug" and measm-e all criminals immediately 
 after conviction. As it is, the prison authorities 
 won't let him, so he has to do it while he has the 
 opportunity. 
 
 It must be admitted that this is rather hard 
 on the innocent, but they now have to suffer with 
 
26 THE PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE 
 
 the guilty for the sins of an indolent and unin- 
 terested legislature. Moreover, if such a right of 
 arrest were proposed, some wiseacre or poHtician 
 would probably rise up and denounce the suggestion 
 as the first step in the direction of a military dictator- 
 ship. Thus, we shall undoubtedly fare happily on 
 in the bHssful belief that our personal liberties are the 
 subject of the most soHcitous and zealous care on 
 the part of the authorities, guaranteed to us under a 
 government which is not of men but of laws, until 
 one of us happens to be arrested (by mistake, of 
 course) and learns by sad experience the practical 
 methods of the police in dealing with criminals and 
 the agreeable but deceptive character of the pleasant 
 fiction of the presumption of innocence. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 PREPAKING A CRIMINAL CASE FOR TRIAL 
 
 When the prosecuting attorney in a great criminal 
 trial arises to open the case to the impanelled jury, 
 very few, if any, of them have the sUghtest concep- 
 tion of the enormous expenditure of time, thought, 
 and labor which has gone into the preparation of the 
 case and made possible his brief and easily delivered 
 speech. For in this opening address of his there must 
 be no flaw, since a single misstated or overstated 
 fact may prejudice the jury against him and result 
 in his defeat. Upon it also depends the jury's first 
 impression of the case and of the prosecutor himself 
 — ^no inconsiderable factor in the result — ^and in a 
 trial of importance its careful construction with due 
 regard to what facts shall be omitted (in order to en- 
 hance their dramatic effect when ultimately proven) 
 may well occupy the district attorney every evening 
 for a week. But if the speech itself has involved study 
 and travail, it is as nothing compared with the amount 
 required by that most important feature of every 
 criminal case — ^the selection of the jury. 
 
 For a month before the trial, or whenever it may 
 be that the jury has been drawn, eveiy member upon 
 the panel has been subjected to an unseen inquisi- 
 torial process. The prosecutor, through his own or 
 
 27 
 
28 PREPARING A CRIMINAL CASE 
 
 through hired sleuths, has studied with microscopic 
 care the family history, the business standing and 
 methods, the financial responsibility, the political 
 and social aflSliations, and the personal habits and 
 "past performances" of each and every talesman. 
 When at the beginning of the trial they, one by one, 
 take the witness-chair (on what is called the voir 
 dire) to subject themselves to an examination by 
 both sides as to their fitness to serve as jurors in the 
 case, the district attorney probably has close at hand 
 a rather detailed account of each, and perchance has 
 great difiiculty in restraining a snule when some pro- 
 spective juror, in his eagerness either to serve or to 
 escape, deliberately equivocates in answer to an im- 
 portant question as to his personal history. 
 
 "Are you acquainted with the accused or his fam- 
 ily?" mildly inquires the assistant prosecutor. 
 
 "No — ^not at aU," the talesman may blandly reply. 
 
 The answer, perhaps, is Hterally true, and yet the 
 prosecutor may be pardoned for murmuring "Liar!" 
 to himself as he sees that his memorandum concern- 
 ing the juror's qualifications states that he belongs 
 to the same "lodge" with the prisoner's imcle by 
 marriage and carries an open account on his books 
 with the defendant's father. 
 
 "I think we will excuse Mr. Ananias," politely 
 remarks the prosecutor; then in an undertone he 
 turns to his chief and mutters: "The old rascal! He 
 would have knifed us into a thousand pieces if we'd 
 given him the chance!" And all this time the dis- 
 gruntled Mr. Ananias is wondering why, if he didn't 
 
PREPARING A CRIMINAL CASE 29 
 
 "know the defendant or his family/' he was not ac- 
 cepted as a jioror. 
 
 Of course, every district attorney has, or should 
 have, pretty good information as to each talesman's 
 actual capabihties as a juror and something of a 
 record as to how he has acted under fire. If he is a 
 member of the "special" panel, it is easy to find out 
 whether he has ever acquitted or convicted in any 
 cause cdehre, and if he has acquitted any plainly guilty 
 defendant in the past it is not likely that his services 
 will be required. If, however, he has convicted in 
 such a case the district attorney may try to lvu"e the 
 other side into accepting him by making it appear 
 that he himself is doubtful as to the juror's desir- 
 ability. Sometimes persons accused of crime them- 
 selves, and actually under indictment, find their way 
 onto the panels, and more than one ex-convict has 
 appeared there in some inexphcable fashion. But to 
 find them out may well require a double shift of men 
 working day and night for a month before the case 
 is called, and what may appear to be the most trivial 
 fact thus discovered may ih the end prove the decisive 
 argument for or against accepting the juror. 
 
 Panel after panel may be exhausted before a jury 
 in a great murder trial has been selected, for each 
 side in addition to its challenges for " cause " or "bias " 
 has thirty* peremptory ones which it may exercise 
 arbitrarily. If the writer's recollection is not at fault, 
 the large original panel drawn in the first Molineux 
 trial was used up and several others had to be drawn 
 * In the State of New YorL 
 
30 PREPARING A CRIMINAL CASE 
 
 imtil eight hundred talesmen had been interrogated 
 before the jury was finally selected. It is usual to 
 examine at least fifty ia the ordiaary murder case 
 before a jury is secured. : 
 
 It may seem to the reader that this scrutiny of 
 talesmen is not strictly preparation for the trial, but, 
 in fact, it is fully as important as getting ready the 
 facts themselves; for a poor jury, either from igno- 
 rance or prejudice, win acquit on the same facts which 
 will lead a sound jury to convict. A famous prose- 
 cutor used to say, "Get your jury — the case wiU take 
 care of itself." 
 
 But as the examination of the panel and the open- 
 ing address come last in point of chronology it will 
 be weU to begin at the beginning and see what the 
 labors of the prosecutor are in the initial stages of 
 preparation. Let us take, for example, some noto- 
 rious ease, where an unfortunate victim has died from 
 the effects of a poisoned piil or draft of medicine, or 
 has been found dead in his room with a revolver bul- 
 let in his heart. Some time before the matter has 
 come into the hands of the prosecutor, the press and 
 the poHce have generally been doing more or less 
 (usually less) effective work upon the case. The yel- 
 low journals have evolved some theory of who is the 
 culprit and have loosed their respective reporters 
 and "special criminologists" upon him. Each has 
 its own idea and its own methods — often unscru- 
 pulous. And each has its own particular victim upon 
 whom it intends to fasten the blame. Heaven save 
 his reputation! Many an innocent man has been 
 
PREPARING A CRIMINAL CASE 31 
 
 ruined for life through the efforts of a newspaper 
 "to make a case," and, of course, the same thing, 
 though happily in a lesser degree, is true of the pohce 
 and of some prosecutors as well. 
 
 In every great criminal case there are always four 
 different and frequently antagonistic elements en- 
 gaged in the work of detection and prosecution — 
 first, the police; second, the district attorney; third, 
 the press; and, lastly, the personal friends and family 
 of the deceased or injured party. Each for its own 
 ends — be it professional pride, personal glorification, 
 hard cash, or revenge — is equally anxious to find the 
 evidence and estabhsh a case. Of course, the poHce 
 are the first ones notified of the commission of a crime, 
 but as it is now almost imiversally their duty to in- 
 form at once the coroner and also the district attor- 
 ney thereof, a tripartite race for glory frequently 
 results which adds nothing to the dignity of the ad- 
 ministration of criminal justice. 
 
 The coroner is at best no more than an appendix 
 to the legal anatomy, and frequently he is a disease. 
 The spectacle of a medical man of small learning and 
 less English trying to preside over a court of first 
 instance is enough to make the accused himself 
 chuckle for joy. 
 
 Not long ago the coroners of New York discovered 
 that, owing to the fact that the district attorney or 
 his representatives generally arrived first at the scene 
 of any crime, there was nothing left for the "medi- 
 cos" to do, for the district attorney would thereupon 
 submit the matter at once to the grand jury instead 
 
32 PREPARING A CRIMINAL CASE 
 
 of going through the formality of a hearing in the 
 coroner's court. The legal medicine men felt ag- 
 grieved, and determined to be such early birds_that 
 no worm shovild them escape. Accordingly, the next 
 time one of them was notified of a homicide he raced 
 his horse down Madison Avenue at such speed that 
 he coUided with a trolley car and broke his leg. 
 
 Another complained to the district attorney that 
 the assistants of the latter, who had arrived at the 
 scene of an asphyxiation before him, had bungled 
 everything. 
 
 "Ach, dose young men!" he exclaimed, wringing 
 his hands — "Dose young men, dey come here und 
 dey opened der vindow und let out der gas und aU 
 mine evidence esgaped." 
 
 The same coroner on another occasion discovered 
 that a miurderer had removed the body of his victim 
 to New Jersey, thus depriving him of any corpse upon 
 which to hold his inquest. A sympathetic reporter 
 thereupon suggested that it would be well to have a 
 law prohibiting any such removal by the party com- 
 mitting a homicide. 
 
 "Dot vas a good idea!" solemnly replied the 
 medical Solon. "It should be made a crime! I wiU 
 haf it proposed at der next legislature." '^ 
 
 It is said that this interesting personage once'in- 
 structed his jury to find that "the diseased came to 
 his death from an ulster on the stomach." 
 , These anecdotes are, perhaps, what judges would 
 call obiter dicta, yet the coroner's court has more than 
 once been utilized as a field in the actual preparation 
 
PREPARING A CRIMINAL CASE 33 
 
 of a criminal case. When Roland B. Molineux was 
 first suspected of having caused the death of Mrs. 
 Adams by sending the famous poisoned package of 
 patent medicine to Harry Cornish through the mails, 
 the assistant district attorney summoned him as a 
 witness to the coroner's court and attempted to get 
 from him in this way a statement which Molineux 
 would otherwise have refused to make. 
 
 When aU the first hullabaloo is over and the accused 
 is under arrest and safely locked up, it is usually 
 found that the police have merely run down the ob- 
 vious witnesses and made a 'primxi Jade case. AU 
 the finer work remains to be done either by the dis- 
 trict attorney himself or by the detective bureau 
 working under his immediate direction or in har- 
 mony with him. Little order has been observed in 
 the securing of evidence. Every one is a fish who runs 
 into the net of the police, and all is grist that comes 
 to their mill. The district attorney sends for the 
 officers who have worked upon the case and for the 
 captain or inspector who has directed their efforts, 
 takes all the papers and tabulates all their informa- 
 tion. His practiced eye shows him at once that a 
 large part is valueless, much is contradictory, and 
 all needs careful elaboration. A winnowing'process 
 occurs then and there; and the officers probably 
 receive a "special detail" from headquarters and 
 thereafter take their orders from the prosecutor him- 
 self. The detective bureau is called in and arrange- 
 ments made for the running down of particular clews. 
 Then he wiU take off his coat, clear his desk, and get 
 down to work. 
 
34 PREPARING A CRIMINAL CASE 
 
 Of course, his first step is to get all the information 
 he can as to the actual facts surrounding the crime 
 itself. He immediately subpcsnas all the witnesses, 
 whether previously interrogated by the police or not, 
 who know anything about the matter, and subjects 
 them to a rigorous cross-examination. Then he sends 
 for the poHce themselves and cross-examines them. 
 If it appears that any witnesses have disappeared 
 he instructs his detectives how and where to look 
 for them. Often this becomes ia the end the most 
 important element in the preparation for the trial. 
 Thus in the Nan Patterson case the search for and 
 ultimate discovery of Mr. and Mrs. Morgan Smith 
 (the sister and brother-iu-law of the accused) was 
 one of its most dramatic features. After they had 
 been found it was necessary to indict and_then to 
 extradite them in order to seciu-e their presence 
 within the jurisdiction, and when all this had been 
 accomplished it proved practically valueless. 
 
 It frequently happens that an entire case wiU rest 
 upon the testimony of a single witness whose absence 
 from the jurisdiction would prevent the trial. An 
 instance of such a case was that of Albert T. Patrick, 
 for without the testimony of his alleged accompHce 
 — ^the valet Jones — ^he could not have been convicted 
 of murder. The preservation of such a witness and his 
 testimony thus becomes of paramount importance, 
 and rascally witnesses sometimes enjoy considerable 
 ease, if not luxury, at the expense of the public while 
 waiting to testify. Often, too, a case of great interest 
 will arise where the question of the guilt of the accused 
 turns upon the evidence of some one person who, 
 
PREPARING A CRIMINAL CASE 35 
 
 either from mercenary motives or because of "blood 
 and affection," is unwilling to come to the fore and 
 tell the truth. A striking case of this sort occurred 
 some ten years ago. The " black sheep " of a promi- 
 nent New York family forged the name of his sister 
 to a draft for thirty thousand dollars. This sister, 
 who was an elderly woman of the highest character 
 and refinement, did not care to pocket the loss her- 
 self and declined to have the draft debited to her 
 account at the bank. A lawsuit followed, in which 
 the sister swore that the name signed to the draft 
 was not in her handwriting. She won her case, but 
 some disinterested though ofl&cious person laid the 
 matter before the district attorney. The forger was 
 arrested and his sister was summoned before the 
 grand j\uy. Here was a pleasant predicament. If 
 she testified for the State her brother would imdoubt- 
 edly go to prison for many years, to say nothing of 
 the notoriety for the entire family which so sensa- 
 tional a case would occasion. She, therefore, sHpped 
 out of the city and sailed for Europe the night before 
 she was to appear before the grand jury. Her brother 
 was in due course indicted and held for trial in large 
 bail, but there was and is no prospect of convicting 
 him for his crime so long as his sister remains in the 
 voluntary exile to which she has subjected herself. 
 She can never return to New York to live unless 
 something happens either to the indictment or her 
 brother, neither of which events seems likely in the 
 immediate future. 
 Perhaps, if the case is one of shooting, the weapon 
 
36 PREPARING A CRIMINAL CASE 
 
 has vanished. Its discovery may lead to the finding 
 of the murderer. In one instance where a body was 
 found in the woods with a bullet through the heart 
 there was nothing to indicate who had committed 
 the crime. The only scintilla of evidence was an 
 exploded cartridge — a small thing on which to build 
 a case. But the district attorney had the hammer 
 marks upon the cap magnified several hundred times 
 and then set out to find the rifle which bore the ham- 
 mer which had made them. Thousands of rifles all 
 over the State were examined. At last in a remote 
 Imnber camp was found the weapon which had fired 
 the fatal bullet. The owner was arrested, accused 
 of the murder, and confessed his crime. In like man- 
 ner, if it becomes necessary to determine where a 
 typewritten document was prepared the letters may 
 be magnified, and by examining the ribbons of sus- 
 pected machines the desired fact may be ascertained. 
 The magnifying glass still plays an important part 
 in detecting crime, although usually in ways little 
 suspected by the general public. 
 
 On the other hand, where the weapon has not been 
 spirited away the detectives may spend weeks in 
 discovering when and where it was purchased. Every 
 pawnshop, every store where a pistol could be bought, 
 is investigated, and under proper circumstances the 
 requisite evidence to show deliberation and premedi- 
 tation may be secured. 
 
 These investigations are naturally conducted at 
 the very outset of the preparation of the case. The 
 weapon, in seven trials out of ten, is the most im- 
 
PREPARING A CRIMINAL CASE 37 
 
 portant thing in it. By its means it can generally 
 be demonstrated whether the shooting was accidental 
 or intentional — and whether or not the killing was in 
 self-defence. 
 
 Where this last plea is interposed it is usually made 
 at once upon the arrest, the accused explaining to 
 the police that he fired only to save his own life. In 
 such a situation, where the killing is admitted, prac- 
 tically the entire preparation wiU centre upon the 
 most minute tests to determine whether or not the 
 shot was fired as the accused claims that it was. The 
 writer can recall at least a dozen cases in his own ex- 
 perience where the story of the defendant, that the 
 revolver was discharged in a hand-to-hand struggle, 
 was conclusively disproved by experimenting with 
 the weapon before the trial. There was one homi- 
 cide in which a bullet perforated a felt cap and pene- 
 trated the forehead of the deceased. The defendant 
 asserted that he was within three feet of his victim 
 when he fired, and that the other was about to strike 
 him with a bludgeon. A quantity of felt, of weight 
 similar to that of the cap, was procured and the re- 
 volver discharged at it from varying distances. A 
 microscopic examination showed that certain dis- 
 colorations around the bullet-hole (claimed by the de- 
 fence to be birais made by the powder) were, in fact, 
 grease marks and that the shot must have been fired 
 from a distance of about fifteen feet. The defendant 
 was convicted on his own story, supplemented by 
 the evidence of the witness who made the tests. 
 
 The most obvious and first requirement is, as has 
 been said, to find the direct witnesses to the facts 
 
38 PREPARING A CRIMINAL CASE 
 
 surrounding the crime, commit their statements under 
 oath to writing, so that they cannot later be denied 
 or evaded, and make siu-e that these witnesses will not 
 only hold no intercourse with the other side, but will 
 be on hand when wanted. This last is not always an 
 easy task, and various expedients often have to be 
 resorted to, such as placing hostile witnesses under 
 poKce surveillance, or in some cases in "houses of 
 detention," and hiding others in out-of-the-way 
 places, or supplying them with a bodyguard if vio- 
 lence is to be anticipated. When the proper time 
 comes the favorable witnesses must be duly drilled 
 or coached, which does not imply anything im- 
 proper, but means merely that they must be in- 
 structed how to deliver their testimony, what an- 
 swers are expected to certain questions, and what 
 facts it is intended to elicit from them. Wit- 
 nesses are often offended and run amuck because 
 they are not given a chance upon the stand to 
 tell the story of their lives. This must be guarded 
 against and steps taken to have their statements 
 given in such a way that they are audible and in- 
 telHgible. A few lessons in elementary elocution are 
 generally vitally necessary. The man with the bas- 
 soon voice must be tamed, and the birdlike old lady 
 made to chirp more loudly. But all this is the self- 
 evident preparation which must take place in every 
 case, and while highly important is of far less in- 
 terest than the development of the circumstantial 
 evidence which is the next consideration of the dis- 
 trict attorney. 
 The discovery and proper proof of minute facts 
 
PREPARING A CRIMINAL CASE 39 
 
 which tend to demonstrate the guilt of an accused 
 are the joy of the natural prosecutor, and he may in 
 his enthusiasm spend many thousands of dollars on 
 what seems, and often is, an immaterial matter. 
 Youthful officials intrusted with the preparation of 
 important cases often become unduly excited and 
 forget that the taxpayers are paying the bills. The 
 writer remembers sitting beside one of these en- 
 thusiasts during a celebrated trial. A certain woman 
 witness had incidentally testified to a remote meeting 
 with the deceased at which a certain other woman 
 was alleged to have been present. The matter did 
 not seem of much interest or importance, but the 
 youth in question seized a yellow pad and excitedly 
 wrote in blue pencil, "Find Birdie" (the other lady) 
 "at any cost!" This he handed to a detective, who 
 hastened importantly away. Let us hope that "Bir- 
 die "was found speedily and in an inexpensive manner. 
 
 When the case against Albert T. Patrick, later 
 convicted of the murder of the aged William M. 
 Rice, was in course of preparation it was foimd 
 desirable to show that Patrick had called up his 
 accomplice on the telephone upon the night of the 
 murder. Accordingly, the telephone company was 
 compelled to examine several hundred thousand 
 telephone sUps to determine whether or not this 
 had actually occurred. While the fact was es- 
 tablished in the affirmative, the company now des- 
 troys its sUps in order not to have to repeat the 
 performance a second time. 
 
 Likewise, in the preparation of the Molineux case 
 
40 PREPARING A CRIMINAL CASE 
 
 it became important to demonstrate that the accused 
 had sent a letter under an assumed name ordering 
 certain remedies. As a result, one of the employees 
 of the patent-medicine company spent several 
 months going over their old mail orders and com- 
 paring them with a certain sample, tmtil at last the 
 letter was unearthed. Of coiirse, the district at- 
 torney had to pay for it, and it was probably worth 
 what it cost to the prosecution, although Molineux's 
 conviction was reversed by the Court of Appeals 
 and he was acquitted upon his second trial. 
 
 The danger is, however, that a prosecutor who has 
 an unlimited amount of money at his disposal may 
 be led into expenditures which are hardly justified 
 simply because he thinks they may help to secure a 
 conviction. Nothing is easier than to waste money 
 in this fashion, and pubhc oflBcials sometimes spend 
 the county's money with considerably more free- 
 dom than they would their own under similar cir- 
 cumstances. 
 
 The legitimate expenses connected with the prep- 
 aration of every important case are naturally large. 
 For example, diagrams must be prepared, photographs 
 taken of the place of the crime, witnesses compen- 
 sated for their time and their expenses paid, and, 
 most important of all, competent experts must be 
 engaged. This leads us to an interesting aspect of 
 the modem jury trial. 
 
 When no other defence to homicide is possible the 
 claim of insanity is frequently interposed. Nothing 
 is more confusing to the ordinary juryman than try- 
 
PREPARING A CRIMINAL CASE 41 
 
 ing to determine the probative value of evidence 
 touching unsoundness of mind, and the applica- 
 tion thereto of the legal test of criminal responsibil- 
 ity. In point of fact, juries are hardly to be blamed 
 for this, since the law itseK is antiquated and the sub- 
 ject one abounding in difficulty. Unfortunately the 
 opportunity for vague yet damaging testimony on 
 the part of experts, the ease with which any desired 
 opinion can be defended by a sHght alteration in the 
 hypothetical facts, and the practical impossibility 
 of exposure, have been seized upon with avidity by 
 a score or more of unscrupulous aUenists who are 
 prepared to sell their services to the highest bidder. 
 These men are all the more dangerous because, clever 
 students of mental disease and thorough masters of 
 their subject as they are, they are able by adroit qual- 
 ifications and skilful evasions to make haK-truths 
 seem as convincing as whole ones. They ask and re- 
 ceive large sums for their services, and their dishonest 
 testimony must be met and refuted by the evidence 
 of honest physicians, who, by virtue of their attain- 
 ments, have a right to demand substantial fees. Even 
 so, newspaper reports of the expense to the State of 
 notorious trials are grossly exaggerated. The entire 
 cost of the first Thaw trial to the County of New 
 York was considerably less than twenty thousand 
 dollars, and the second trial not more than half that 
 amoimt. To the defence, however, it was a costly 
 matter, as the recent schedules in bankruptcy of the 
 defendant show. Therein it appears that one of his 
 half-dozen counsel still claims as owing to him for 
 
42 PREPARING A CRIMINAL CASE 
 
 his services on the first trial the modest sum of thirty- 
 five thousand dollars! The cost of the whole defence 
 was probably ten times that sum. Most of the money 
 goes to the lawyers, and the experts take the re- 
 mainder. 
 
 It goes without saying that both prosecutor and 
 attorney for the defence must be masters of the sub- 
 ject involved. A trial for poisoning means an ex- 
 haustive study not only of analytic chemistry, but of 
 practical medicine on the part of all the lawyers in 
 the case, while a plea of insanity requires that, for 
 the time being, the district attorney shall become 
 an alienist, familiar with every aspect of paranoia, 
 dementia prcecox, and all other forms of mania. He 
 must also reduce his knowledge to concrete, workable 
 form, and be able to defeat opposing experts on their 
 own ground. But such knowledge comes only by 
 prayer and fasting — or, perhaps, rather by months 
 of hard and remorseless grind. 
 
 The writer once prosecuted a druggist who had, 
 by mistake, filled a prescription for a one-fo\irth- 
 grain pill of calomel with a one-fourth-grain pill of 
 morphine. The baby for whom the pill was intended 
 died in consequence. The defence was that the pre- 
 scription had been properly filled, but that the child 
 was the victim of various diseases, from acute gas- 
 tritis to cerebro-spinal meningitis. In preparation 
 the writer was compelled to spend four hours every 
 evening for a week with three specialists, and became 
 temporarily a minor expert on children's diseases. 
 To-day he is forced to admit that he would not 
 
PREPARING A CRIMINAL CASE 43 
 
 know a case of acute gastritis from one of mumps. 
 But the druggist was convicted. 
 
 Yet it is not enough to prepare for the defence you 
 believe the accused is going to interpose. A con- 
 scientious preparation means getting ready for any 
 defence he may endeavor to put in. Just as the pru- 
 dent general has an eye to every possible turn of the 
 battle and has, if he can, re-enforcements on the 
 march, so the prosecutor must be ready for anything, 
 and readiest of all for the unexpected. He must not 
 rest upon the belief that the other side will concede 
 any fact;, however clear it may seem. Some cases 
 are lost simply because it never occurs to the district 
 attorney that the accused will deny something which 
 the State has twenty witnesses to prove. The twenty 
 witnesses are, therefore, not summoned on the day 
 of trial, the defendant does deny it, and as it is a case 
 of word against word the accused gets the benefit 
 of the doubt and, perhaps, is acquitted. 
 
 No case is properly prepared imless there is in the 
 cotui-room every witness who knows anything about 
 any aspect of the case. No one can foretell when the 
 unimportant wiU become the vital. Most cases turn 
 on an unconsidered point. A prosecutor once lost 
 what seemed to him the clearest sort of a case. When 
 it was all over, and the defendant had passed out of 
 the coiirt-room rejoicing, he turned to the foreman 
 and asked the reason for the verdict. 
 
 " Did you hear your chief witness say he was a car- 
 penter?" inquired the foreman. 
 
 "Why, certainly," answered the district attorney. 
 
44 PREPARING A CRIMINAL CASE 
 
 " Did you hear me ask him what he paid for that 
 ready-made pine door he claimed to be working on 
 when he saw the assault?" 
 
 The prosecutor recalled the incident and nodded. 
 
 "Well, he said ten doUars — and I knew he was a 
 Uar. A door like that don't cost but four-fifty!" - 
 
 It is, perhaps, too much to reqtdre a knowledge 
 of carpentry on the part of a lawyer trying an assault 
 case. Yet the juror was undoubtedly right in his 
 deduction. 
 
 In a case where insanity is the defence, the State 
 must dig up and have at hand every person it can 
 find who knew the accused at any period of his career. 
 He will probably claim that in his youth he was kicked 
 in a game of foot-ball and fractured his skuU, that 
 later he fell into an elevator shaft and had concussion 
 of the brain, or that he was hit on the head by a 
 biu-glar. It is usually difficult, if not impossible, to 
 disprove such assertions, but the prosecutor must be 
 ready, if he can, to show that foot-ball was not in- 
 vented until after the defendant had attained ma^ 
 turity, that it was some other man who fell down the 
 elevator shaft, and to produce the burglar to deny 
 that the assault occurred. Naturally, complete prep- 
 aration for an important trial demands the presence 
 of many witnesses who ultimately are not needed 
 and who are never called. Probably in most such 
 cases about half the witnesses do not testify at all. . 
 
 Most of what has been said has related to the prep- 
 aration for trial of cases where the accused is already 
 under arrest when the district attorney is called into 
 
PREPARING A CRIMINAL CASE 45 
 
 the case. If this stage has not been reached the prose- 
 cutor may well be called upon to exercise some of the 
 functions of a detective in the first instance. 
 
 A few years ago it was brought to the attention 
 of the New York authorities that many black- 
 mailing letters were being received bearing the name 
 of "Lewis Jarvis." These were of a character to 
 render the apprehension of the writer of them a 
 matter of much importance. The letters directed 
 that the replies be sent to a certain box in the New 
 York post-office, but as the boxes are numerous and 
 close together it seemed doubtful if "Lewis Jarvis" 
 could be detected when he called for his mail. The 
 district attorney, the police, and the post-office of- 
 ficials finally evolved the scheme of plugging the lock 
 of "Lewis Jarvis's" box with a match. The scheme 
 worked, for "Jarvis," finding that he could not use 
 his key, went to the dehvery window and asked for 
 his mail. The very instant the letters reached his 
 hand the gyves were upon the wrists of one of the 
 best-known attorneys in the city. 
 
 When the district attorney has been apprised that 
 a crime has been committed, and that a certain per- 
 son is the guilty party, he not infrequently allows the 
 suspect to go his way under the careful watch of detec- 
 tives, and thus often secures much new evidence 
 against him. In this way it is sometimes estabhshed 
 that the accused has endeavored to bribe the wit- 
 nesses and to induce them to leave the State, while 
 the whereabouts of stolen loot is often discovered. 
 In most instances, however, the district attorney 
 
46 PREPARING A CRIMINAL CASE 
 
 begins where the police leave off, and he merely sup- 
 plements their labors and prepares for the actual 
 trial itself. But the press he has always with him, 
 and from the first moment after the crime up to the 
 execution of the sentence or the hberation of the 
 accused, the reporters dog his footsteps, sit on his 
 doorstep, and deluge him with advice and informa- 
 tion. 
 
 Now a cimous feature about the evidence "worked 
 up" by reporters for their papers is that Httle of 
 it materiaUzes when the prosecutor wishes to make 
 use of it. Of course, some reporters do excellent 
 detective work, and there are one or two veterans 
 (Kke Gus. Roeder of the World) attached to the 
 criminal courts in New York City who, in addition 
 to their Uterary capacities, are natiu-al-bom sleuths, 
 and combine with a knowledge of criminal law, al- 
 most as extensive as that of a regular prosecutor, a 
 resourcefulness and nerve that often win the case 
 for whichever side they espouse. I have frequently 
 found that these men knew more about the cases 
 which I was prosecuting than I did myself, and a 
 tip from them has more than once turned defeat 
 into victory. But newspaper men, for one reason or 
 another, are loath to testify, and usually make but 
 poor witnesses. They feel that their motives will be 
 questioned, and are naturally imwilling to put them- 
 selves in an equivocal position. The writer well 
 remembers that in the Mabel Parker case, where the 
 defendant, a young and pretty woman, had boasted 
 of her forgeries before a roomful of reporters, it was 
 
PREPARING A CRIMINAL CASE 47 
 
 impossible, when her trial was called, to find more 
 than one of them who would testify — and he had 
 practically to be dragged to the witness chair. In 
 point of fact, if reporters made a practice of being 
 witnesses it would probably hurt their business. 
 But, however much "faked" news may be pubHshed, 
 a prosecutor who did not listen to all the hints the 
 press boys had to give would make a great mistake; 
 and as aUies and advisers they are often invaluable, 
 for they can teU him where and how to get evidence 
 of which otherwise he would never hear. 
 
 The week before a great case is called is a busy one 
 for the prosecutor in charge. He is at his office early 
 to interview his main witnesses and go over their tes- 
 timony with them so that their regular daily work 
 may not be interrupted more than shall be actually 
 necessary. Some he cautions against being over-en- 
 thusiastic and others he encourages to greater em- 
 phasis. The bashful "cop" is badgered until at last 
 he ceases to begin his testimony in the cut-and-dried 
 poKce fashion. 
 
 "On the morning of the twenty-second of July, 
 about 3.30 a.m., while on post at the comer of Des- 
 brosses^Street ," he starts. 
 
 "Oh, quit that!" shouts the district attorney. 
 "Tell me what you saw in your own words." 
 , The "cop" blushes and stammers: 
 
 "Aw, well, on the morning of the twenty-second 
 of July, about 3.30 a.m. " 
 
 "Look here!" yells the prosecutor, jimiping to his 
 feet and shaking his fist at him, "do you want to be 
 
48 PREPAEING A CRIMINAL CASE 
 
 taken for a d— n liar? 'Morning of the twenty-sec- 
 ond of July, about 3.30 a. m., while on post!' You 
 never talked like that in your life." 
 
 By this time the "cop" is "mad clear through." 
 
 "I'm no har!" he retorts. "I saw the cuss puU 
 his gun and shoot!" 
 
 "Well, why didn't you say so?" laughs the prose- 
 cutor, and Patrick, mollified with a cigar, dimly per- 
 ceives the objectionable feature of his testimony. 
 
 About this time one of the sleuths comes in to re- 
 port that certain much-desired witnesses have been 
 "located " and are in custody downstairs. The assis- 
 tant makes immediate preparation for taking their 
 statements. Then one of the experts comes in for a 
 chat about a new phase of the case occasioned by the 
 discovery that the defendant actually did have spasms 
 when an infant. The assistant wisely makes an ap- 
 pointment for the evening. A telegram arrives say- 
 ing that a witness for the defence has just started for 
 New York from Philadelphia and should be duly 
 watched on arrival. The district attorney sends for 
 the assistant to inquire if he has looked up the law 
 on similar cases in Texas and Alabama — ^which he 
 probably has not done; and a friend on the telephone 
 informs him that Tomkins, who has been drawn 
 on the jury, is a boon companion of the prisoner and 
 was accustomed to play bridge with him every Sun- 
 day night before the murder. 
 
 Coincidently, some private detectives enter with 
 a long report on the various members of the panel, 
 including the aforesaid Tomkins, whom they pro- 
 
PREPARING A CRIMINAL CASE 49 
 
 nounce to be "all right," and as never having, to their 
 knowledge, laid eyes on the accused. Finally, in de- 
 spair, the prosecutor locks himself in his hbrary with a 
 copy of the Bible, "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations," 
 and a volume of celebrated speeches, to prepare his 
 summing up, for no careful trial lawyer opens a case 
 without first having prepared, to some extent, at 
 least, his closing address to the jury. He has thought 
 about this for weeks and perhaps for months. In his 
 dreams he has formulated syllogisms and dehvered 
 them to imaginary yet obstinate talesmen. He has 
 glanced through many volumes for similes and quo- 
 tations of pertinency. He has tried various argu- 
 ments on his friends until he knows just how, if he 
 succeeds in proving certain facts and the defence ex- 
 pected is interposed, he is going to convince the twelve 
 jurors that the defendant is gxiilty and, perhaps, win 
 an everlasting reputation as an orator himself. 
 
 This superficial sketch of how an important crim- 
 inal case is got ready for trial woiild be incomplete 
 without some further reference to something which 
 has been briefly hinted at before — ^preparation upon 
 its purely legal aspect. This may well demand al- 
 most as much labor as that required in amassing the 
 evidence. Yet a careful and painstaking investiga- 
 tion of the law governing every aspect of the case 
 is indispensable to success. The prosecutor with a 
 perfectly clear case may see the defendant walk out 
 of court a free man, simply because he has neglected 
 to acquaint himseK with the various points of law 
 which may arise in the course of the trial, and the 
 
50 PREPARING A CRIMINAL CASE 
 
 lawyer for an accused may find his client convicted 
 upon a charge to which he has a perfectly good legal 
 defence, for the same reason. 
 
 Looking at it from the point of view of the prison- 
 er's coimsel, it is obvious that it is quite as efficacious 
 to free your client on a point of law, without having 
 the case go to the jury at all, as to secure an acquittal, 
 at their hands. 
 
 At the conclusion of the evidence introduced in 
 behalf of the State there is always a motion made to 
 dismiss the case on the ground of alleged insufficiency 
 in the proof. This has usually been made the sub- 
 ject of the most exhaustive study by the lawyers for 
 the defence, and requires equal preparation on the 
 part of the prosecutor. The writer recalls trying a 
 bankrupt, charged with fraud, where the lawyer for 
 the defendant had written a brief of some three hun- 
 dred pages upon the points of law which he proposed 
 to argue to the court upon his motion to acquit. But, 
 imfortunately, his cHent pleaded guilty and the vol- 
 irnie was never brought into play. 
 
 But a mastery of the law, a thorough knowledge 
 and control of the evidence, a careful preparation for 
 the opening and closing addresses, and an intimate 
 acquaintance with the panel from which the jury is 
 to be drawn are by no means the only elements in 
 the preparation for a great legal battle. One thing 
 still remains, quite as important as the rest — the 
 selection of the best time and the best court for the 
 trial. "A good beginning" in a criminal case means 
 a beginning before the right judge, the proper jury. 
 
PREPARING A CRIMINAL CASE 51 
 
 and at a time when that vague but important in- 
 fluence known as pubUc opinion augurs success. A 
 clever criminal lawyer, be he prosecutor or lawyer for 
 the defendant, knows that all the preparation in the 
 world is of no account provided his case is to come 
 before a stupid or biased judge, or a prejudiced or 
 obstinate jury. Therefore, each side, in a legal battle 
 of importance, studies, as well as it can, the charac- 
 ter, connections, and cast of mind of the different 
 judges who may be called upon to hear the case, and, 
 like a jockey at the flag, tries to hurry or delay, as the 
 case may be, until the judicial auspices appear most 
 favorable. A lawyer who has a weak defence seeks 
 to bring the case before a weak judge, or, if public 
 clamor is loud against his client, makes use of every 
 technical artifice to secure delay, by claiming that 
 there are flaws in the indictment, or by moving for 
 commissions to take testimony ia distant points of 
 the country. The opportunities for legal procrasti- 
 nation are so nimierous that in a compUcated case the 
 defence may often delay matters for over a year. 
 This may be an important factor in the final result. 
 Yet even this is not enough, for, ultimately, it is 
 the judge's charge to the jury which is going to guide 
 their deUberations and, in large measure, determine 
 their verdict. The lawyers for the defence, therefore, 
 prepare long statements of what they either believe 
 or pretend to beUeve to be the law. These statements 
 embrace aU the legal propositions, good or bad, favor- . 
 able to their side of the case. If they can induce the 
 judge to foUow these so much the better for their 
 
62 PREPARING A CRIMINAL CASE 
 
 client, for even if they are not law it makes no dif- 
 ference, since the State has no appeal from an ac- 
 quittal ia a criminal case, no matter how much the 
 judge has erred. In the same way, but not in quite 
 the same fashion, the district attorney prepares "re- 
 quests to charge," but his desire for favorable in- 
 structions should be, and generally is, curbed by the 
 consideration that if the judge makes any mistake 
 in the law and the defendant is convicted he can 
 appeal and upset the case. Of course, some prose- 
 cutors are so anxious to convict that they will wheedle 
 or deceive a judge into giving charges which are not 
 only most inimical to the prisoner, but so utterly 
 unsound that a reversal is sure to follow; but when 
 one of these professional bloodhounds is baying upon 
 the trail all he thinks of is a conviction — ^that is all 
 he wants, all the pubKc will remember; to him will 
 be the glory; and when the case is finally reversed 
 he will probably be out of office. These "requests" 
 cover pages, and touch upon every phase of law ap- 
 pHcable or inapphcable to the case. Frequently they 
 number as many as fifty, sometimes many more. It 
 is "up to" the judge to decide "off the bat" which 
 are right and which are wrong. If he guesses that 
 the right one is wrong or the wrong one right the 
 defendant gets a new trial. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 SENSATIONALISM AND JURY TRIALS 
 
 For the past twenty-five years we have heard the 
 cry upon all sides that the jury system is a failure. 
 Indeed, such to-day is prevalently believed to be the 
 case; and to this general indictment is frequently 
 added the specification that the trials in our higher 
 courts of criminal justice are the scenes of grotesque 
 buffoonery and heartless merriment, where cynical 
 juries recklessly disregard their oaths and where mor- 
 bid crowds flock to satisfy the cravings of their im- 
 aginations for details of blood and sexuahty. 
 
 It is unnecessary to question the honesty of those 
 who thus pictiu-e the administration of criminal jus- 
 tice in America. Indeed, thus it probably appears to 
 them. But before such an arraignment of present 
 conditions in a highly civilized and progressive na- 
 tion is accepted as final, it is well to examine into 
 its inherent probabilities and test it by what we 
 know of the actual facts. 
 
 In the first place, it should be remembered that 
 the jiuy was instituted and designed to protect the 
 EngUsh freeman from tyranny upon the part of the 
 crown. Judges were, and sometimes still are, the 
 creatures of a ruler or imduly subject to his influence. 
 And that ruler neither was, nor is, always the head 
 
 63 
 
54 SENSATIONALISM AND JURY TRIALS 
 
 of the nation; but just as in the days of the Nor- 
 mans he might have been a powerful earl whose in- 
 fluence could make or unmake a judge, so to-day he 
 may be none the less a ruler if he exists in the person 
 of a political boss who has created the judge before 
 whom his poKtical enemy is to be tried. The writer 
 has seen more than one judge openly striving to in- 
 fluence a jury to convict or to acquit a prisoner at 
 the dictation of such a boss, who, not content to 
 issue his commands from behind the arras, came to 
 the court-room and ascended the bench to see that 
 they were obeyed. Usually the jury indignantly re- 
 sented such interference and administered a well- 
 merited rebuke by acting directly contrary to the 
 clearly indicated wishes of the judge. 
 
 But while admitting its theoretic value as a bul- 
 wark of liberty, the modem assailant of the jury 
 brushes the consideration aside by asserting that the 
 system has "broken down" and "degenerated into 
 a farce." 
 
 Let us now see how much of a farce it is. If four 
 times out of five a judge rendered decisions that 
 met with general approval, he would probably be 
 accounted a highly satisfactory judge. Now, out of 
 every one hundred indicted prisoners brought to the 
 bar for trial, probably fifteen ought to be acquitted 
 if prosecuted impartially and in accordance with the 
 strict rules of evidence. In the year 1910 the juries 
 of New York County convicted in sixty-six per cent 
 of the cases before them. If we are to test fairly the 
 efficiency of the system, we must deduct from the 
 
SENSATIONALISM AND JURY TRIALS 55 
 
 thirty-four acquittals remaining the fifteen acquittals 
 which were justifiable. By so doing we shall find 
 that in the year 1910 the New York County juries 
 did the correct thing in about eighty-one cases out 
 of every hundred. This is a high percentage of efii- 
 ciency.* Is it likely that any judge would have 
 done much better? 
 
 After a rather long experience as a prosecutor, in 
 which he has conducted many hundreds of criminal 
 cases, the writer beheves that the ordinary New York 
 'City jury finds a correct general verdict four times 
 out of five. As to talesmen in other localities he has 
 no knowledge or rehable information. It seems hardly 
 possible, however, that juries in other parts of the 
 United States could be more heterogeneous or less 
 intelligent than those before which he formed his 
 conclusions. Of course, jury judgments are some- 
 times flagrantly wrong. But there are many ver- 
 dicts popularly regarded as examples of lawlessness 
 
 * The following table gives the yearly percentages of convictions 
 and acquittals by verdict in New York County since 1901 : 
 
 TEAR 
 
 NUMBER 
 CONVICTIONS 
 BY VEBDICT 
 
 NUMBER 
 1 ACQUITTALS 
 BY VERDICT 
 
 CONVICTIONS 
 PER CENT 
 
 ACQCITTALB 
 PER CENT 
 
 1901 
 
 551 
 419 
 485 
 495 
 489 
 464 
 582 
 649 
 463 
 649 
 
 344 
 349 
 307 
 357 
 299 
 246 
 264 
 301 
 235 
 325 
 
 62 
 55 
 61 
 58 
 62 
 65 
 69 
 68 
 66 
 66 
 
 38 
 45 
 39 
 42 
 38 
 35 
 31 
 32 
 34 
 34 
 
 1902 
 
 1903 
 
 1904 
 
 1905 
 
 1906 
 
 1907 
 
 1908 
 
 1909 
 
 1910 
 
 
56 SENSATIONALISM AND JURY TRIALS 
 
 which, if examined calmly and solely from the point 
 of view of the evidence, wo;ild be found to be the 
 reasonable acts of honest and inteUigent juries. 
 
 For example, the acquittal of Thaw upon the ground 
 of insanity is usually spoken of as an illustration of 
 sentimentality on the part of jurymen, and of their 
 willingness to be swayed by their emotions where a 
 woman is involved. But few clearer cases of insanity 
 have been estabhshed in a court of justice. The dis- 
 trict attorney's oum experts had pronounced the de- 
 fendant a hopeless paranoiac; the prosecutor had, 
 at a previous trial, openly declared the same to be 
 his own opinion; and the evidence was convincing. 
 At the time it was rendered, the verdict was accepted 
 as a foregone conclusion. To-day the case is com- 
 monly cited as proof of the gullibility of juries and of 
 the impossibility of convicting a rich man of a crime. 
 ' There will always be some persons who think that 
 every defendant should be convicted and feel ag- 
 grieved if he is turned out by the jury. Yet they en- 
 tirely forget, in their displeasure at the acquittal of 
 a man whom they instinctively "know" to be guilty, 
 that the jury probably had exactly the same im- 
 pression, but were obliged under their oaths to acquit 
 because of an insufficiency of evidence. 
 
 An excellent illustration of such a case is that of 
 Nan Patterson. She is commonly supposed to have 
 attended, upon the night of her acquittal, a banquet 
 at which one of her lawyers toasted her as "the guilty 
 girl who beat the case." Whether she was guilty or 
 not, there is a general and well-founded impression 
 
SENSATIONALISM AND JURY TRIALS 57 
 
 that she murdered Csesar Young. Yet the writer, 
 who was present throughout the trial, felt at the 
 conclusion of the case that there was a fairly reason- 
 able doubt of her guilt. Even so, the jury disagreed, 
 although the case is usually referred to as an acquit- 
 tal and a monument to the sentimentality of juries. 
 
 The acquittal of Roland B. Molineux is also re- 
 called as a case where a man, previously proved guilty, 
 managed to escape. The writer, who was then an 
 assistant district attorney, made a careful study of 
 the evidence at the time, and feels confident that the 
 great majority of the legal profession woiild agree with 
 him in the opinion that the Court of Appeals had no 
 choice but to reverse the defendant's first conviction 
 on account of the most prejudicial error committed 
 at the trial, and that the jury who acquitted him 
 upon the second occasion had equally no choice when 
 the case was presented with a proper regard to the 
 rules of evidence and procedure. Indeed, on the 
 second trial the evidence pointed almost as convinc- 
 ingly toward another person as toward the defendant. 
 
 I have mentioned the Patterson, Thaw, and Mol- 
 ineux trials because they are cases commonly referred 
 to in support of the general contention that the jury 
 system is a failure. But I am inclined to beheve that 
 any single judge, bench of judges, or board of com- 
 missioners wovild have reached the same result as 
 the juries did in these instances. 
 
 It is quite true that juries, for rather obvious rea- 
 sons, are more apt to acquit in murder cases than in 
 others. In the first place, save where the defendant 
 obviously belongs to the vicious criminal class, a 
 
58 SENSATIONALISM AND JURY TRIALS 
 
 jury finds it somewhat difficult to believe, xinless 
 overwhelming motive be shown,, that he could have 
 dehberately taken another's Hfe. Thus, with sound 
 reason, they give great weight to the plea of self-de- 
 fence which the accused urges upon them. He is 
 generally the only witness. His story has to be dis- 
 proved by circumstantial evidence, if indeed there 
 be any. Frequently it stands alone as the only ac- 
 count of the homicide. Thus murder cases are al- 
 most always weaker than others, since the chief wit- 
 ness has been removed by death; whQe at the same 
 time the nature of the punishment leads the jury 
 unconsciously to require a higher degree of proof 
 than in cases where the consequences are less abhor- 
 rent. All this is quite natural and inevitable. More- 
 over, homicide cases as a rule are better defended 
 than others, a fact which undoubtedly affects the 
 result. These considerations apply to all trials for 
 homicide, notorious or otherwise, the results of which 
 in New York County for the past ten years are set 
 forth in the following table: 
 
 YEAR 
 
 CONVICTIONa 
 
 ACQUITTALB 
 
 CONVICTIONS 
 PER CENT 
 
 ACQUITTALS 
 
 PBB CENT 
 
 1901 
 
 25 
 31 
 42 
 37 
 32 
 53 
 39 
 35 
 43 
 45 
 
 17 
 11 
 8 
 14 
 13 
 22 
 10 
 17 
 11 
 15 
 
 60 
 74 
 84 
 72 
 71 
 70 
 78 
 67 
 80 
 75 
 
 40 
 26 
 16 
 28 
 29 
 30 
 22 
 33 
 20 
 25 
 
 1902 
 
 1903 
 
 1904 
 
 1905 
 
 1906 
 
 1907 
 
 1908 
 
 1909 
 
 1910 
 
 
 Total 
 
 382 
 
 138 
 
 Av. 73 
 
 Av. 27 
 
 
SENSATIONALISM AND JURY TRIALS 59 
 
 A popular impression exists at the present time 
 that a man convicted of murder has but to appeal 
 his case on some technical ground in order to se- 
 cure a reversal, and thus escape the consequences of 
 his crime. How wide of the mark such a belief may- 
 be, at least so far as one locality is concerned, is 
 shown by the fact that in New York State, from 1887 
 to 1907, there were 169 decisions by the Court of Ap- 
 peals on appeals from convictions of murder in the 
 first degree, out of which there were only twenty- 
 nine reversals. Seven of these defendants were again 
 inomediately tried and convicted, and a second time 
 appealed, upon which occasion only two were suc- 
 cessful, while five had their convictions promptly 
 affirmed. Thus, so far as the ultimate triumph 
 of justice is concerned, out of 169 cases in that 
 period the appellants finally succeeded in twenty- 
 two only. 
 
 Since 1902 there have been twenty-seven de- 
 cisions rendered in first-degree murder cases by the 
 Court of Appeals, with only three reversals* The 
 more important convictions throughout the State 
 are affirmed with great regularity. 
 
 As to the conduct of such cases, the writer's own 
 experience is that a murder trial is the most solemn 
 proceeding known to the law. He has prosecuted at 
 least fifty men for murder, and convicted more than 
 he cares to remember. Such trials are invariably- 
 dignified and deUberate so far as the conduct of the 
 legal side of the case is concerned. No judge, how- 
 ever unqualified for the bench; no prosecutor, how- 
 * Written ia 1909. 
 
60 SENSATIONALISM AND JURY TRIALS 
 
 ever light-minded; no lawyer, however callous, fails 
 to feel the serious nature of the transaction or to be 
 affected strongly by the fact that he is dealing with 
 life and death. A prosecutor who openly laughed or 
 sneered at a prisoner charged with murder would 
 severely injure his cause. The jmy, naturally, are 
 overwhelmed with the gravity of the occasion and 
 the responsibility resting upon them. 
 
 In the Patterson, Thaw, and Molineux cases the 
 evidence, unfortunately, dealt with unpleasant sub- 
 jects and at times was revolting, but there was a quiet 
 propriety in the way in which the witnesses were ex- 
 amined that rendered it as inoffensive as it could 
 possibly be. Outside the court-room the vulgar 
 crowd may have spat and sworn; and inside no doubt 
 there were degenerate men and women who eagerly 
 strained their ears to catch every item of depravity. 
 But the throngs that filled the court-room were quiet 
 and well ordered, and the merely curious outnum- 
 bered the morbid. 
 
 The writer deprecates the impulse which leads 
 judges, from a feeling that justice should be publicly 
 administered, to throw wide the doors of every court- 
 room, irrespective of the subject-matter of the trial. 
 We need have no fear of Star Chamber proceedings 
 in America, and no harm would be done by excluding 
 from the court-room all persons who have no business 
 at a trial. 
 
 It is, of course, not unnatural that in the course of 
 a trial occupying weeks or months the tension should 
 occasionally be reheved by a gleam of hiunor. After 
 you have been busy trying a case for a couple of weeks 
 
SENSATIONALISM AND JURY TRIALS 61 
 
 you go to court and set to work in much the same 
 frame of mind in which you would attack any other 
 business. But the fact that a small boy sometimes 
 sees something fimny at a fimeral, or a bevy of gig- 
 gling shop-girls may be sitting in the gaUeiy at a 
 fashionable wedding, argues Httle in respect to the 
 solemnity or beauty of the service itself. 
 
 What are the celebrated cases — the trials that at- 
 tract the attention and interest of the pubUc? In the 
 first place, they are the very cases which contain 
 those elements most likely to arouse the sympathy 
 and prejudices of a jury — ^where a girl has taken the 
 life of her supposed seducer, or a husband has avenged 
 his wife's alleged dishonor. Such cases arouse the 
 pubhc imagination for the very reason that every 
 man reahzes that there are two sides to every genuine 
 tragedy of this character — ^the legal and the natural. 
 Thus, aside from any other consideration, they are 
 the obvious instances where justice is most likely to 
 go astray. 
 
 In the next place, the defence is usually in the 
 hands of counsel of adroitness and ability; for even 
 if the prisoner has no money to pay his lawyer, the 
 latter is willing to take the case for the advertising 
 he wiU get out of it. 
 
 Third, a trial which lasts for a long time naturally 
 results in creating in the jury's mind an exaggerated 
 idea of the prisoner's rights, namely, the presumption 
 of innocence and the benefit of the reasonable doubt. 
 For every time that the jury wiQ hear these phrases 
 once in a petty larceny or forgery case, they wiU 
 
62 SENSATIONALISM AND JURY TRIALS 
 
 hear them in a big murder trial a hundred times. 
 They see the defendant day after day, and the rela- 
 tion becomes more personal. Their responsibihty 
 seems greater toward him than toward the defendant 
 in petty cases. 
 
 Last, as previously suggested, murder cases are 
 apt to be inherently weaker than others, and more 
 often depend upon circimastantial evidence. 
 
 The results of such cases are therefore but a poor 
 test of the efficiency of a jiuy system. They are, in 
 fact, the precise cases where, if at aU, the jury might 
 be expected to go wrong. 
 
 But juries would go astray far less frequently even 
 in such trials were it not for that most vicious factor 
 in the administration of criminal justice — ^the "yel- 
 low" journal. For the impression that pubHc trials 
 are the scenes of coarse buffoonery and brutality is 
 due to the manner in which these trials are exploited 
 by the sensational papers. 
 
 The instant that a sensational homicide occurs, 
 the aim of the editors of these papers is — ^not to see 
 that a swift and sure retribution is visited upon the 
 guilty, or that a prompt and unquaUfied vindication 
 is accorded to the innocent, but, on the contrary, so 
 to handle the matter that as many highly colored 
 "stories" as possible can be run about it. 
 
 Thus, where the case is perfectly clear against the 
 prisoner, the "yellow" press seeks to bolster up the 
 defence and really to justify the killing by a thinly 
 disguised appeal to the readers' passions. Not in- 
 frequently, while the editorial page is mourning the 
 
SENSATIONALISM AND JURY TRIALS 63 
 
 prevalence of homicide, the front columns are brist- 
 ling with sensational accounts of the home-coming of 
 the injured husband, the heart-brealdng confession 
 of the weak and erring wife, and the sneering non- 
 chalance of the seducer, vmtil a pubUc sentiment is 
 created which, if it outwardly deprecates the invo- 
 cation of the unwritten law, secretly avows that it 
 would have done the same thing in the prisoner's 
 place. 
 
 This antecedent pubUc sentiment is fostered from 
 day to day until it has unconsciously permeated every 
 comer of the commimity. The juryman will swear 
 that he is unaffected by what he has read, but un- 
 known to himself there are already tiny furrows in 
 his brain along which the appeal of the defence will 
 run. 
 
 In view of this deliberate perversion of truth and 
 morals, the euphemisms of a hard-put defendant's 
 counsel when he pictures a chorus girl as an angel 
 and a coarse bounder as a St. George seem innocent 
 indeed. It is not within the rail of the court-room 
 but within the pages of these sensational journals 
 that justice is made a farce. The phrase "contempt 
 of court" has ceased practically to have any signifi- 
 cance whatever. The front pages teem with carica- 
 tures of the judge upon the bench, of the individual 
 jurors with exaggerated heads upon impossible 
 bodies, of the lawyers ranting and bellowing, juxta- 
 posed with sketches of the defendant praying beside 
 his prison cot or firing the fatal shot in obedience to 
 a message borne by an angel from on high. 
 
64 SENSATIONALISM AND JURY TRIALS 
 
 How long would the "unwritten law" play any 
 part in the administration of criminal justice if eveiy 
 paper in the land united in demanding, not only in 
 its editorials, but upon its front pages, that private 
 vengeance must cease? Let the "yellow " newspapers 
 confine themselves simply to an accurate report of 
 the evidence at the trial, with a reiterated insistence 
 that the law must take its course. Let them stop 
 pandering to those morbid tastes which they have 
 themselves created. Let the "Sympathy Sisters," 
 the photographer, and the special artist be excluded 
 from the court-room. When these things are done, 
 we shall have the same high standard of efiiciency 
 upon the part of the jury in great murder trials that 
 we have in other cases. 
 
CRIMINALS 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 WHY DO MEN KILL? 
 
 When a shrewd but genial editor called me up 
 on the telephone and asked me how I should like 
 to write an article (a "story," he called it) on the 
 above lurid title, I laughed in his — I mean the tele- 
 phone's face. 
 
 "My dear fellow!" I said (I should only have the 
 nerve to call him that over a wire) . " My dear f eUow ! 
 It would ruin me ! How could I keep my self-respect 
 and write that kind of sensational stuff — ^me, a repu- 
 table, conservative, dry-as-dust member of the bar! 
 Go to! Why do men kill? Ha-ha! Why do men 
 eat? Why do men drink? Why do men love? Why 
 do men " 
 
 "Yes," came back his somewhat cynical voice 
 "AVhy?" 
 
 "How do I know?" I answered, still trying to be 
 jocular. "I never killed anybody!" 
 • "Eh?" said he. 
 
 I paused. 
 
 "Well," I admitted, "never actually with my own 
 hand, old chap! I have — taken part — so to speak — 
 in — er — ^proceedings that ultimately resulted in the 
 death of certain human beings — ^in a perfectly legal 
 way, but I'm not sure that I entirely approved of 
 
 67 
 
68 WHY DO MEN KILL ? 
 
 it. Duty, you know! Salary — I had a growing 
 family." 
 
 " Look here ! " he interrupted. " I want that story. 
 I want to know something. I do! I want to know 
 why one man kills another man. If we knew why, 
 maybe we could stop it, couldn't we? We could try 
 to, anyhow. And you know something about it. 
 You've prosecuted nearly a hundred men for mur- 
 der. Get the facts — ^that's what I want. Cut the 
 adjectives and morahty, and get down to the reasons. 
 Anything particularly undignified about that?" 
 
 "N — 0," I began, taking a fresh start. 
 
 "All right," he replied crisply. "Send it up for 
 January." And he rang off. 
 
 I arose and walked over to the bookcase on which 
 reposed several shelves of "minutes" of criminal 
 trials. They were dusty and depressing. Practically 
 every one of them was a memento of some poor devU 
 gone to prison or to the chair. Where were they now 
 — and why did they kill — ^yes, why did they? 
 
 I glanced along the red-labeled backs. 
 
 "People versus Candido." Now why did he kill? 
 I remembered the ItaUan perfectly. He killed his 
 friend because the latter had been too attentive to 
 his wife. "People versus Higgins." Why did he? 
 That was a drunken row on a New Year's Eve within 
 the sound of Trinity chimes. " People versiis Sterling 
 Greene." Yes, he was a colored man — I recalled 
 the evidence — drink and a "yellow gal." "People 
 versus Mock Duck" — a Chinese feud between the 
 On Leong Tong and the Hip Siag Tong — a vendetta, 
 
WHY DO MEN KILL ? 69 
 
 first one Chink shot and then another, turn and turn 
 about, running back through Mott Street, New York, 
 Boston, San Francisco, until the origin of the quarrel 
 was lost in the dim Celestial mists across the sea. 
 Out of the first four cases the following motives: 
 Jealousy — 1. Drink — 1. Drink and jealousy — 1. 
 Scattering (how can you term a "Tong" row?) — 1. 
 I began to get interested. Supposing I dug out all 
 the homicide cases I had ever tried, what would the 
 result show as to motive for the killing? Would 
 drink and women account for seventy-five per cent? 
 Mentally I ran my eye back over nearly ten years. 
 What other motives had the defendants at the bar 
 had? There was Laudiero — an Itahan " Camorrista " 
 — ^he had killed simply for the distinction it gave him 
 among his countrymen and the satisfaction he felt 
 at being known as a "bad" man — a "capo maestra." 
 There was Joseph Ferrone — ^pure jealousy again. 
 Hendry — animal hate intensified by drink. Yoscow 
 — a dehberate murder, planned in advance by several 
 of a gang, to get rid of a young buUy who had made 
 himseK generally unpleasant. There was Childs, 
 who had killed, as he claimed, in self-defence because 
 he was set upon and assaulted by rival runners from 
 another seaman's boarding house. Really it began 
 to look as if men killed for a lot of reasons. I wanted 
 to call up my friend and ask what kind of kiEings 
 counted. Did he simply want to know why men 
 murdered one another? He couldn't possibly mean 
 that I was to attempt to explain why they saw fit to 
 exterminate each other by means of capital punish- 
 
70 WHY DO MEN KILL ? 
 
 ment? Or ran over one another in trains and auto- 
 mobiles? Or allowed each other to die from un- 
 sanitary conditions? Or lynched one another? — 
 there was only one reason for that I knew. Or kiUed 
 themselves? Nor did he mean to have me go into 
 the question of why they killed elsewhere — ^in Naples, 
 Sicily, Constantinople, and so on. No; what he 
 wanted to find out was why men in the United States 
 of America killed other men of their own kind without 
 malice aforethought — ^legal and quasi-legal killings 
 excluded. Moreover, he wanted to know from the 
 actual personal experience of those who had weighed 
 the evidence as to their motives in a sufficiently large 
 number of cases to be representative. 
 
 One consideration at once suggested itself. How 
 about the killings where the murderer is never caught? 
 The prisoners tried for murder are only a mere frac- 
 tion of those who commit murder. True, and the 
 more deliberate the murder, the greater, unfortu- 
 nately, the chance of the villain getting away. Still, 
 in cases merely of suspected murder, or in cases where 
 no evidence is taken, it would be manifestly unfair 
 arbitrarily to assign motives for the deed, if deed it 
 was. No, one must start with the assumption, suffi- 
 ciently accurate under all the circumstances, that 
 the killings in which the killer is caught are fairly 
 representative of killings as a whole. 
 
 All crimes naturally tend to divide themselves into 
 two classes — crimes against property and crimes 
 against the person, each class having an entirely 
 different assortment of reasons for their commission. 
 
WHY DO MEN KILL ? 71 
 
 There can be practically but one motive for theft, 
 burglary, or robbery. It is, of course, conceivable that 
 such crimes might be perpetrated for revenge — to 
 deprive the victim of some highly prized possession. 
 But in the main there is only one object — ^unlawful 
 gain. So, too, blackmail, extortion, and kidnapping 
 are all the products of the desire for "easy money." 
 But, unquestionably, this is the reason for murder in 
 comparatively few cases. 
 
 The usual motive for crimes against the person — 
 assault, manslaughter, mayhem, murder, etc. — ^is the 
 desire to punish, or be avenged upon another by in- 
 flicting personal pain upon him or by depriving him 
 of his most valuable asset — ^life. And this desire for 
 retaUation or revenge generally grows out of a recent 
 humiliation received at the hands of the other per- 
 son, a real or fancied wrong to oneself, a member of 
 one's family, or one's property. But this was too 
 easy an answer to my friend's question. He could 
 have got that much out of any elementary text-book 
 on penology. He wanted and deserved more than 
 that, and I set out to give it to him. 
 
 My first inquiry was in the direction of original 
 sources. I sought out the man in the district attor- 
 ney's ofl&ce who had had the widest general experience 
 and put the question to him. This was Mr. Charles 
 C. Nott, Jr., who has been trying murder cases for 
 nearly ten years. It so happened that he had kept a 
 complete record of all of them and this he courteously 
 placed at my disposal. The Ust contains sixty-two 
 cases, and the defendants were of divers races. These 
 
72 WHY DO MEN KILL ? 
 
 homicides included seventeen committed in cold blood 
 (about twenty-five per cent, an extraordinary per- 
 centage) from varying motives, as follows: One de- 
 fendant (white) murdered his colored mistress sim- 
 ply to get rid of her; another killed out of revenge 
 because the deceased had "Ucked" him several 
 times before; another, having quarrelled with his 
 friend over a glass of soda water, later on retimied 
 and precipitated a quarrel by striking him, in the 
 course of which he killed him; another because the 
 deceased had induced his wife to desert him; another 
 lay in wait for his victim and killed him without the 
 motive ever being ascertained; one man kdUed his 
 brother to get a sum of money, and another because 
 his brother would not give him money; another be- 
 cause he believed the deceased had betrayed the 
 Armenian cause to the Turks; another because he 
 wished to get the deceased out of the way in order 
 to marry his wife; and another because deceased 
 had knocked him down the day before. One man 
 had killed a girl who had ridiculed him; and one a 
 girl who had refused to marry him; another had 
 killed his daughter because she could no longer five 
 in the house with him; one, an informer, had been 
 the victim of a Black Hand vendetta; and the last 
 had poisoned his wife for the insurance money in 
 order to go off with another woman. There were two 
 cases of infanticide, one in which a woman threw 
 her baby into the lake in Central Park, and another 
 in which she gave her baby poison. Besides these 
 murders, five homicides had been committed in the 
 
WHY DO MEN KILL ? 73 
 
 course of perpetrating other crimes, including burg- 
 lary and robbery. 
 
 Passing over three cases of culpable negligence re- 
 sulting in death, we come to thirty-seven homicides 
 during quarrels, some of which might have been tech- 
 nically classified as murders, but which, being com- 
 mitted "ia the heat of passion," in practically every 
 instance resulted in a verdict of manslaughter. The 
 quarrels often arose over the most trifling matters. 
 One was a dispute over a broom, another over a horse 
 blanket, another over food, another over a twenty- 
 five-cent bet in a pool game, another over a loan of 
 fifty cents, another over ten cents in a crap game, and 
 still another over one dollar and thirty cents in a crap 
 game. Five men were killed in drunken rows which 
 had no immediate cause except the desire to "start 
 something." One man kfiled another because he had 
 not prevented the theft of some Ixunber, one (a po- 
 liceman) because the deceased would not "move on" 
 when ordered, one because a bartender refused to 
 serve him with any more drinks, and one (a bartender) 
 because the deceased insisted that he should serve 
 more drinks. One man was killed in a quarrel over 
 politics, one in a fuss over some beer, one in a card 
 game, one trying to rob a fruit-stand, one in a dis- 
 pute with a ship's officer, one in a dance hall row. 
 One man killed another whom he found with his 
 wife, and one wife killed her husband for a similar 
 cause; another wife killed her husband simply be- 
 cause she "could not stand him," and one because 
 he was fighting with their son. One man was killed 
 
74 WHY DO MEN KILL ? 
 
 by another who was trymg to collect from him a 
 debt of six hundrgd dollars. One quarrel resulting 
 ia homicide arose because the defendant had pointed 
 out deceased to the police, another because the par- 
 ticipants called each other names, and another arose 
 out of an alleged seduction. Three homicides grew 
 out of street rows originating in various ways. One 
 man killed another who was fighting with a friend 
 of the first, a janitor was killed in a "continuous 
 row" which had been going on for a long time, and 
 one homicide was committed for "nothing in par- 
 ticular." 
 
 This astonishing olla podrida of reasons for de- 
 priving men of their lives leaves one stunned and 
 confused. Is it possible to deduce any order out of 
 such homicidal chaos? Still, an attempt to classify 
 such diverse causes enables one to reach certain gen- 
 eral conclusions. Out of the sixty-two homicides 
 there were seventeen cold-blooded murders, with de- 
 hberation and premeditation (in such cases the recv- 
 sons for the killing are by comparison unimportant) ; 
 three homicides due to negHgence, five committed 
 while perpetrating a felony; thirty-seven man- 
 slaughters, due in sijrteen cases to quarrels (simply), 
 thirteen to drink, four to disputes over money, three 
 to women, one to race antagonism. 
 
 Reclassifying the seventeen murders according to 
 causes, we have: Six due to women, four to quarrels, 
 five to other causes, and two infanticides. Added to 
 the manslaughters previously classified, we have a 
 total of sixty-two killings, due in twenty cases to 
 
WHY DO MEN KILL ? 75 
 
 quarrels, thirteen to drink, nine to women, four to 
 disputes over money, one to race antagonism, five 
 to general causes, three to negligence, two in- 
 fanticides, five during the commission of other 
 crimes. 
 
 The significant features of this analysis are that 
 about seventy-five per cent of the killings were due 
 to quarrels over small sums or other matters, drink 
 and women; over fifty per cent to drink and petty 
 quarrels, and about thirty per cent to quarrels sim- 
 ply. The trifling character of the causes of the quar- 
 rels themselves is shown by the fact that in three of 
 these particular cases, tried in a single week, the total 
 amount involved in the disputes was only eighty-five 
 cents. That is about twenty-eight and one-half cents 
 a life. Many a murder ia a barroom grows out of 
 an argmnent over whether a glass of beer has, or 
 has not, been paid for, or whose turn it is to treat; 
 and more than one man has been killed in New York 
 City because he was too clumsy to avoid stepping 
 on somebody's feet or bumping into another man on 
 the sidewalk. 
 
 The writer sincerely regrets that his own lack of 
 initiative prevented his keeping a diary similar to 
 that of his colleague, Mr. Nott, during his seven 
 years' service as a prosecutor. It is now impossible 
 for him to refresh his memory as to the causes of all 
 the various homicides which he prosecuted, but where 
 he can do so the evidence points to a conclusion sim- 
 ilar to that deduced from Mr. Nott's record. The 
 proximate causes were trifling — ^the underlying cause 
 
76 WHY DO MEN KILL ? 
 
 was the lack of civilization of the defendant — ^his bru- 
 tality and absence of self-control. 
 
 With a view to ascertaining conditions in general 
 throughout the United States, I asked a chpping 
 agency to send me the first one hundred notices of 
 actual homicides which should come under its scis- 
 sors. The immediate result of this experiment was 
 that I received forty-five notices sut)posedly relat- 
 ing to mm-ders and homicides, which on closer exam- 
 ination proved to be anything but what I wanted 
 for the purpose in view. With only one or two excep- 
 tions they related not to deaths from violence re- 
 ported as having occurred on any particular day, but 
 to notices of convictions, acquittals, indictments, 
 pleas of guilty and not gioilty, rewards offered, 
 sentences, executions, "suspicions" of the police, 
 "mysteries revived," and even editorials on capital 
 pimishment. 
 
 A letter of protest brought in due course, but much 
 more slowly, one hundred and seven clippings, which 
 yielded the following reasons why men killed: 
 There were four suicides, three lynchings, one infan- 
 ticide, three murders while resisting arrest, three 
 criminals kiUed while resisting arrest, two men HQed 
 in riots, eight murders in the com-se of committing 
 burglaries and robberies, seven persons kiUed in ven- 
 dettas, three race murders, and twenty-four IdUed 
 in quarrels over petty causes; there were twelve 
 murders from jealousy, followed in four instances 
 by suicide on the part of the mvirderer; six killings 
 justifiable on the "higher law" theory only, but 
 
WHY DO MEN KILE ? 77 
 
 involving great provocation, and thirty deliberate 
 slaughters. The last chpping recounted how an irate 
 husband pounded a "masher" so hard that he died. 
 Leaving out the suicides and those Idlled while re- 
 sisting arrest, there remain one hundred persons mur- 
 dered, not only by persons insane or wild from the 
 effects of liquor, but by robbers and burglars, brutes, 
 bullies, and thugs, husbands, wives, and lovers, and 
 by a vast number of people who not only destroyed 
 their enemies in the fury of anger, but id many in- 
 stances openly went out gunning for them, lay in wait 
 for them in the dark, or hacked off their heads with 
 hatchets while they slept. 
 
 It is, indeed, a sanguinary record, from which Httle 
 consolation is to be derived, and the only comfort is 
 the probabihty that the accounts of the first one 
 hundred mixrders anywhere in Europe would un- 
 doubtedly be just as blood-ciu-dling. I had simply 
 asked the chpping bureau to send me one hundred 
 horrors and I had got them. They did not indi- 
 cate anything at all so far as the ratio of homicide 
 to population was concerned or as to the blood- 
 thirstiness of Americans in general. They merely 
 showed what despicable things murders were. 
 
 As to the reasons for the killings, they were as 
 diverse as those which Mr. Nott had prosecuted, 
 save that there were more of an ultra blood-thirsty 
 character, due probably to the fact that the young 
 lady who did the chpping wanted (after one rebuff) 
 to make sure that I was satisfied with the goods she 
 sent me. And this suggests a reason for the large 
 
78 WHY DO MEN KILL ? 
 
 percentage of cold-blooded killings prosecuted by my 
 friend — ^namely, that Mr. Nott being the most as- 
 tute prosecutor available, the district attorney, when- 
 ever the latter had a particularly atrocious case, sent 
 it to him in order that the defendant might surely get 
 his fidl deserts. 
 
 The reasons for these homicides were of every sort; 
 police officers and citizens were shot and killed by 
 criminals trying to make "get-aways," and by ne- 
 groes and others "running amuck"; despondent 
 young men shot their unresponsive sweethearts and 
 then either blew out their own brains or pretended 
 to try to do so; two stable-men had a duel with re- 
 volvers, and each killed the other; several men were 
 shot for being too attentive to young women residing 
 in the same hotels; an ItaHau) whose wife had left 
 him and gone to her mother, went to the house and 
 killed her, her sister, her sister's husband, his mother- 
 in-law, two children, and finally himself; the " Gopher 
 Gang" started a riot at a "benefit" dance given to 
 a widow and Idlled a man, after which they fled to 
 the woods and fired from cover upon the poHce until 
 eighteen were overpowered and arrested; a young 
 girl and her fianc6, sitting in the parlor, planning 
 their honeymoon, were unexpectedly interrupted by a 
 rejected suitor of the gu-l's, who shot and killed both 
 of them; an Italian who peeked into a bedroom, just 
 for fun, afterward rushed in and cut off two persons' 
 heads with an ax — one of them was his wife; a gang 
 of white ruffians shot and then burned a negro fam- 
 ily of three peacefully working in the fields; a man 
 
WHY DO MEN KILL ? 79 
 
 who went to the front door to see who had tapped 
 on his window was shot through the heart; a striker 
 was killed by a twenty-five-pound piece of flagging 
 thrown from a roof; there was a gan fight of colored 
 men at Madison, Wisconsin, at which three were 
 shot; a gang of negro ruflSans killed and mutilated 
 a white woman (with a baby in her arms) and her 
 husband; masked robbers called a man to his barn 
 at Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and cut his 
 throat; an Italian was found with his head split in 
 two by a butcher's cleaver; a negress in Lafayette, 
 Louisiana, killed a family of six with a hatchet; a 
 negro farmer and his two daughters were lynched 
 and their bodies burned by four white men (who will 
 probably also be Ijrnched if caught) ; a girl of eleven 
 shot her girl friend of about the same age and killed 
 her; several persons were found stabbed to death; 
 a plumber killed his brother (also a plumber) for say- 
 ing that he stole two dollars; a murderer was shot 
 by a posse of militia in a cornfield; a card game at 
 Bayonne, New Jersey, resulted in a revolver fight 
 on the street in which one of the players was HQed; 
 bank robbers kiUed a cashier at twelve o'clock noon; 
 a jealous lover in Butte, Montana, shot and killed 
 his sweetheart, her father, and mother; a deputy 
 sheriff was murdered; burglars kiUed several persons 
 in the coiu'se of their business; Kokolosski," a Pole, 
 kicked his child to death; and a couple of dozen peo- 
 ple were incidentally shot, stabbed, or otherwise 
 disposed of in the course of quarrels over the most 
 trivial matters. In almost no case was there what 
 
80 WHY DO MEN KILL ? 
 
 an intelligent, civilized man would regard as an ade- 
 quate reason for the homicide. They killed because 
 they felt like killing, and yielded to the impulse, 
 whatever its immediate origin. 
 
 This conclusion is abimdantly supported by the 
 figures of the Chicago Tribune for the seven years 
 ending in 1900, when carefully analyzed. During 
 this period 62,812 homicides were recorded. Of these 
 there were 17,120 of which the causes were unknown 
 and 3,204 committed while making a justifiable ar- 
 rest, in self-defence, or by the insane, so that there 
 were in fact only 42,488 felonious homicides the 
 causes of which can be definitely alleged. The ratio 
 of the "quarrels" to this net total is about seventy- 
 five per cent. There were, in addition, 2,848 homi- 
 cides due to Hquor — that is, without cause. Thus 
 eighty per cent of all the murders and manslaughters 
 in the United States for a period of seven years were 
 for no reason at all or from mere anger or habit, aris- 
 ing out of causes often of the most trifling character. 
 
 Nor are the conclusions changed by the figures of 
 the years between 1904 and 1909. 
 
 During this period 61,786 homicides were recorded. 
 Of these there were 9,302 of which the causes were 
 not known, and 2,480 conmiitted while making a 
 justifiable arrest, in self-defence, or by the insane, 
 leaving 50,004 cases of felonious homicides of known 
 causes. Of these homicides, 33,476 were due to quar- 
 rels and 4,799 to Hquor, a total of 38,275 out of the 
 50,004 cases of known causes being traceable in this, 
 another seven years, to motives the most casual. ' 
 
WHY DO MEN KILL ? 81 
 
 It would be stupid to allege that the reason men 
 killed was because they had been stepped on or had 
 been deprived of a glass of beer. The cause Ues 
 deeper than that. It rests in the willingness or de- 
 sire of the murderer to kiU at all. Among barbaric 
 or savage peoples this is natural; but among civilized 
 nations it is hardly to be anticipated. If the negro 
 who shoots his fellow because he beheves himself to 
 have been cheated out of ten cents were really civil- 
 ized, he would either not have the impulse to kiU or, 
 having the impulse to kill, would have sufficient 
 power of seK-control to refrain from doing so. This 
 power of self-control may be natural or acquired, and 
 it may or may not be possessed by the man who feels 
 a desire to commit a homicide. The fact to^be ob- 
 served — ^the interesting and, broadly speaking, the 
 astonishing fact — ^is that among a people hke our- 
 selves anybody should have a desire to kill. It is 
 even more astonishing than that the impulse should 
 be yielded to so often if it comes. 
 
 This, then, is the real reason why men kill — be- 
 cause it is inherent m their state of mind, it is part 
 of their mental and physical make-up — they are 
 ready to kUl, they want to kill, they are the kind of 
 men who do kiU. This is the result of their heredity, 
 environment, educational and religious training, or 
 the absence of it. How many readers of this paper 
 have ever experienced an actual desire to kill another 
 human being? Probably not one hundredth of one 
 per cent. They belong to the class of people who 
 either never have such an impulse, or at any rate 
 
82 WHY DO MEN KILL ? 
 
 have been taught to keep such impulses under con- 
 trol. Hence it is futile to try to explain that some 
 men kiU for a trifling sum of money, some because 
 they feel insulted, others because of pohtical or labor 
 disputes, or because they do not like their food. 
 Any one of these may be the match that sets off the 
 gunpowder, but the real cause of the kUling is the 
 fact that the gunpowder is there, lying around loose, 
 and ready to be touched off. What engenders this 
 gunpowder state of mind would make a valuable 
 sociological study, but it may well be that a seemingly 
 inconsequential fact may so embitter a boy or man 
 toward life or the human race in general that in time 
 he "sees red" and goes through the world looking 
 for trouble. Any cause that makes for crime and de- 
 pravity makes for murder as well. The little boy 
 who is driven out of the tenement onto the street, 
 and in turn off the street by a policeman, untU, find- 
 ing no wholesome place to play, he joins a "gang" 
 and begins an incipient career of crime, may end in 
 the "death house." 
 
 The table on the opposite page gives the figures col- 
 lected by the Chicago Tribune for the years from 
 1881 to 1910. 
 
 In view of the foregoing it may seem paradoxical 
 for the writer to state that he questions the alleged 
 imusual tendency to commit murder on the part of 
 citizens of the United States. Yet of one fact he is 
 absolutely convinced — ^namely, that homicide has 
 substantially decreased in the last fifteen years. Even 
 according to the figures collected by the Chicago 
 
WHY DO MEN KILL ? 
 
 83 
 
 Tribune, there were but 8,975 homicides in 1910 as 
 compared with 10,500 in 1895, and 10,652 in 1896. 
 
 Number of Murders and HoMicroES in the United States Each 
 Year Since 1881, Compared with the Population 
 
 THAR 
 
 NUMBER or 
 MURDERS AND 
 HOMICIDES IN 
 
 THE UNITED 
 STATES 
 
 ESTIMATED 
 
 POPULATION 
 
 Off THE 
 
 UNITED STATES 
 
 NUMBER OP 
 
 MURDERS AND 
 
 HOMIdDBB 
 
 FOB EACH 
 
 MILLION OP 
 
 PEOPLE 
 
 1881 
 
 1,266 
 1,467 
 1,697 
 1,465 
 1,808 
 1,499 
 2,335 
 2,184 
 3,667 
 4,290 
 5,906 
 6,791 
 6,615 
 9,800 
 10,600 
 10,662 
 9,520 
 7,840 
 6,225 
 8,276 
 7,862 
 8,834 
 8,976 
 8,482 
 9,212 
 9,350 
 8,712 
 8,952 
 8,103 
 8,976 
 
 51,316,000 
 56,l'48,000 
 
 62,'6'22',250 
 
 69,043,000 
 
 75,994,576 
 77,764,000 
 79,117,000 
 
 91,972,266 
 
 24.7 
 
 27.9 
 
 31.6 
 
 26.7 
 
 32.2 
 
 26.1 
 
 39.8 
 
 36.4 
 
 68.2 
 
 68.5 
 
 92.4 
 
 104.2 
 
 99.5 
 
 144.7 
 
 162.2 
 
 161.3 
 
 132.8 
 
 107.2 
 
 83.6 
 
 108.7 
 
 100.9 
 
 111.7 
 
 112.0 
 
 "97.5" 
 
 1882 
 
 1883 
 
 1884 
 
 1886 
 
 1886 
 
 1887 
 
 1888 
 
 1889 
 
 1890 
 
 1891 
 
 1892 
 
 1893 
 
 1894 
 
 1896 
 
 1896 
 
 1897 
 
 
 1899 
 
 
 1901 
 
 
 1903 
 
 
 1905 
 
 
 1907 
 
 
 1909 
 
 1910 
 
 Total 
 
 191,150 
 
 
 
 Meantime the population of our country has been 
 leaping onward. 
 
84 WHY DO MEN KILL ? 
 
 We are blood-thirsty enough, God knows, without 
 making things out any worse than they are or juggHng 
 the figures. Our murder rate per 100,000 xmquestion- 
 ably exceeds that of most of the countries of western 
 Europe, but, as the saying is, "there's a reason." If 
 our homicide statistics related only to the white pop- 
 ulation of even the second generation bom in this 
 country we should find, I am convinced, that we are 
 no more homicidal than France and Belgium, and 
 less so than Italy. It is to be expected that with our 
 Chinese, "greaser," and half-breed population in the 
 West, our Black Belt in the South, and our Sicilian 
 and South Italian immigration in the North and 
 East, our murder rate should exceed those of the 
 continental nations, which are nothing if not well 
 poUced. 
 
 But of one thing we can be abundantly certain 
 without any figures at all, and that is that our pres- 
 ent method of administering justice (less the actions 
 of juries than of judges) — ^the system taken as a 
 whole — offers no deterrent to the embryonic or pro- 
 fessional criminal. The administration of justice to- 
 day is not the swift judgment of honest men upon 
 a crinainal act, but a clever game between judge and 
 lawyer, in which the action of the jury is discounted 
 entirely and the moves are made with a view to check- 
 mating justice, not in the trial courtroom, but before 
 the appellate tribunal two or three years later. 
 
 "My young feUer," said a grizzled veteran of the 
 criminal bar to me long years ago, after oiu" jury had 
 gone out, "there's lots of things in this game you 
 
WHY DO MEN KILL ? 85 
 
 ain't got on to yet. Do you think I care what this 
 jury does? Not one mite. I got a nice little error 
 into the case the very first day — and I've set back 
 ever since. S'pose we are convicted? I'll get Jim 
 here [the prisoner] out on a certificate and it'll be 
 two years before the Court of Appeals will get around 
 to the case. Meantime Jim'U be out makin'money 
 to pay me my fee — won't you, Jim? Then your wit- 
 nesses will be gone, and nobody'll remember what 
 on earth it's all about. You'll be down ia Wall Street 
 practicing real law yourself, and the indictment will 
 kick around the office for a year or so, aU covered 
 with dust, and then some day I'U get a friend of mine 
 to come in quietly and move to dismiss. And it'll 
 6e dismissed. Don't you worry! Why, a thousand 
 other murders will have been committed in this 
 county by the time that happens. Bless your soul! 
 You can't go on tryin' the same man forever! Give 
 the other fellers a chance. You shake your head? 
 Well, it's a fact. I've been doin' it for forty years. 
 You'll see." And I did. That may not be why men 
 kill, but perhaps indirectly it may have something to 
 do with it. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 DETECTIVES AND OTHERS 
 
 A DETECTIVE, according to the dictionaries, is one 
 "whose occupation it is to discover matters as to 
 which information is desired, particularly wrong- 
 doers, and to obtain evidence to be used against 
 them." A private detective, by the same authority, 
 is one "engaged xmofficially in obtaining secret in- 
 formation for or guarding the private interests of 
 those who employ him." The definition emphasizes 
 the official character of detectives in general as con- 
 trasted with those whose services may be enhsted 
 for hire by the individual citizen, but the distinction 
 is of Httle importance, since it is based arbitrarily 
 upon the character of the employer (whether the 
 State or a private chent) instead of upon the nature 
 of the employment itself, which is the only thing 
 which is likely to interest us about detectives at aU. 
 
 The sanctified tradition that a detective was an 
 agUe person with a variety of side-whiskers no longer 
 obtains even in light hterature, and the most imagina- 
 tive of us is frankly aware of the fact that a detec- 
 tive is just a common man earning (or pretending 
 to earn) a common living by common and obvious 
 means. Yet in spite of ourselves we are accustomed 
 to attribute superhuman acuteness and a lightning- 
 
 86 
 
DETECTIVES AND OTHERS 87 
 
 like rapidity of intellect to this vague and romantic 
 class of fellow-citizens. The ordinary work of a de- 
 tective, however, requires neither of these qualities. 
 Honesty and obedience are his chief requirements, 
 and if he have intelligence as well, so much the 
 better, provided it be of the variety known as horse 
 sense. A genuine candidate for the job of Sherlock 
 Holmes would find little competition. In the first 
 place, the usual work of a detective does not demand 
 any extraordinary powers of deduction at all. 
 
 Leaving out of consideration those who are merely 
 private pohcemen (often in uniform), and principally 
 engaged in patrolling residential streets, preserving 
 order at fairs, race-tracks, and political meetings, or 
 in breaking strikes and preventing riots, the largest 
 part of the work for which detectives are employed 
 is not in the detection of crime and criminals, but in 
 simply watching people, following them, and report- 
 ing as accurately as possible their movements. These 
 functions are known in the vernacular as spotting, 
 locating, and trailing. It requires patience, some 
 powers of observation, and occasionally a little inge- 
 nuity. The real detective under such circumstances 
 is the man to whom they hand in their reports. Yet 
 much of the most dramatic and valuable work that is 
 done involves no acuteness at all, but simply a will- 
 ingness to act as a spy and to brave the dangers of 
 being foimd out. 
 
 There is nothing more thrilling in the pages of 
 modem history than the story of the man (James 
 McPartland) who tmcovered the conspiracies of the 
 
88 DETECTIVES AND OTHERS 
 
 Molly McGuires. But the work of this man was 
 that of a spy pure and simple. 
 
 Another highly speciahzed class of detectives is 
 that engaged in pohce and banking work, who by ex- 
 perience (or even origin) have a wide and intimate 
 acquaintance with criminals of various sorts, and by 
 their famiharity with the latters' whereabouts, asso- 
 ciates, work, and methods are able to recognize and 
 run down the perpetrators of particular crimes. 
 
 Thus, for example, there are men in the detective 
 bureau of New York City who know by name, and 
 perhaps have a speaking acquaintance with, a large 
 number of the pick-pockets and burglars of the East 
 Side. They know their haunts and their ties of friend- 
 ship or marriage. When any particular job is pulled 
 off they have a pretty shrewd idea of who is responsi- 
 ble for it and lay their plans accordingly. If neces- 
 sary, they run in the whole btmch and put each of 
 them through a course of interrogation, accusation, 
 and brow-beating until some one breaks down or 
 makes a slip that involves him in a tangle. These 
 men are special policemen whose knowledge makes 
 them detectives by courtesy. But their work does 
 not involve any particular superiority or quickness of 
 intellect — the quahty which we are wont to associate 
 with the detection of crime. 
 
 Now, if the ordinary householder finds that his 
 wife's necklace has mysteriously disappeared, his 
 first impulse is to send for a detective of some sort 
 or other. In general, he might just as well send for 
 his mother-in-law. Of course, the police can and will 
 
DETECTIVES AND OTHERS 89 
 
 watch the pawnshops for the missing baubles, but 
 no crook who is not a fool is going to pawn a whole 
 necklace on the Bowery the very next day after it 
 has been "lifted." Or he can enlist a private detec- 
 tive who will question the servants and perhaps go 
 through their trunks, if they will let him. Either 
 sort win probably line up the inmates of the house 
 for general scrutiny and try to bully them separately 
 into a confession. This may save the master a dis- 
 agreeable experience, but it is the simplest sort of 
 police work and is done vicariously for the taxpayer, 
 just as the pubhc garbage man reUeves you from the 
 burden of taking out the ashes yourself, because he is 
 paid for it, not on account of your own incapacity or 
 his superiority. Which, speaking of garbage, reminds 
 the writer of a disconnected personal experience in 
 which he endeavored to enlist the services of one of 
 these latter specialists for the purpose of carrying a 
 trunk on his wagon to the steamboat wharf. 
 
 "I'm sorry, sir," replied the gentleman in question, 
 "I ain't used to handling trunks. They ain't in my 
 line. But [proudly] when it comes to swill, I'm as good 
 as anybody !" 
 
 The real detective is the one who, taking up the 
 solution of a crime or other mystery, brings to bear 
 upon it unusual powers of observation and deduction 
 and an exceptional resourcefulness in acting upon 
 his conclusions. Frankly, I have known very few 
 such, although for some ten years I have made use of 
 a large nxmiber of so-called detectives in both public 
 and private matters. As I recall the long line of cases 
 
90 DETECTIVES AND OTHERS 
 
 where these men have rendered service of great value, 
 almost every one resolves itself into a successful 
 piece of mere spying or trailing. Little ingenuity or 
 powers of reason were required. Of course, there are 
 a thousand tricks that an experienced man acquires 
 as a matter of course, but which at first sight seem 
 ahnost like inspiration. I shall not forget my deUght 
 when Jesse Blocher, who had been trailing Charles 
 Foster Dodge through the South (when the latter 
 was wanted as the chief witness against Abe Hummel 
 on the charge of subornation of perjury of which he 
 was finally convicted), told me how he instantly lo- 
 cated his man, without disclosing his own identity, by 
 unostentatiously leaving a note addressed to Dodge 
 in a hrighir-red envelope upon the office counter of the 
 Hotel St. Charles in New Orleans, where he knew his 
 quarry to be stajdng. A few moments later the clerk 
 saw it, picked it up, and, as a matter of course, thrust 
 it promptly into box No. 420, thus involuntarily 
 hanging, as it were, a red lantern on Dodge's door. 
 
 There is no more reason to look for superiority of 
 intelHgence or mental alertness among detectives of 
 the ordinary class than there is to expect it from 
 clerks, stationary engineers, plumbers, or firemen. 
 While comparisons are invidious, I should be inclined 
 to say that the ordinary chauffeur was probably a 
 brighter man than the average detective. This is not 
 to be- taken in derogation of the latter, but as a com- 
 pliment to the former. There is more reason why he 
 should be. There are a great many detectives of am- 
 biguous training. I remember in a celebrated case 
 
DETECTIVES AND OTHERS 91 
 
 discovering that of the more important detectives em- 
 ployed by a well-known private Anti-Crinunal Society 
 in New York, one had been a street vender of frank- 
 furters (otherwise yclept "hot dogs")? and another 
 the keeper of a bird store, which last perhaps qualified 
 him for the pursuit and capture of human game. 
 There is a popular fiction that lawyers are shrewd and 
 capable, similar to the prevailing one that detectives 
 are astute and cunning in their methods. But, as 
 the head of one of the biggest agencies in the country 
 remarked to me the other day, when discussing the 
 desirabihty of retaining local counsel in a distant 
 city: "By thunder! You know how hard it is to find 
 a lawyer that isn't a dead am" I feel confident that 
 he did not mean this in the sense that there was no 
 good lawyer except a dead lawyer. What my detec- 
 tive friend probably had in mind was that it was diffi- 
 cult to find a lawyer who brought to bear on a new 
 problem any originality of thought or action. It is 
 even harder to find a detective who is not in this 
 sense a dead one. I have the feeling, being a lawyer 
 myself, that (for educational reasons probably) it is 
 harder to find a five detective than a Uve lawyer. 
 There are a few of both, however, if you know where 
 to look for them. But it is easy to fall into the hands 
 of the Philistines. 
 
 The fimdamental reason why it is so hard to form 
 any just opinion of detectives in general is that (ex- 
 cept by their fruits) there is little opportunity to dis- 
 criminate between the able and the incapable. Now, 
 the more difficult and complicated his task the less 
 
92 DETECTIVES AND OTHERS 
 
 likely is the sleuth (honest or otherwise) to succeed. 
 The chances are a good deal more than even that 
 he will never solve the mystery for which he is en- 
 gaged. Thus at the end of three months you will 
 have only his reports and his bill — ^which are poor 
 comfort, to say the least. And yet he may have really 
 worked eighteen hours per day in your service. But 
 a dishonest detective has only to disappear (and take 
 his ease for the same period) and send you his reports 
 and his bill — and you will have only his word for 
 how much work he has done and how much money 
 he has spent. You are absolutely in his power — 
 unless you hire another detective to watch him. Con- 
 sequently there is no class in the world where the 
 temptation to dishonesty is greater than among de- 
 tectives — ^not even among plumbers, cabmen, butch- 
 ers, and lawyers. (God knows the peril of aU of 
 these!) This, too, is, I fancy, the reason that the 
 evidence of the police detective is received with so 
 much suspicion by jurymen — ^they know that the 
 only way for him to retain his position is by mak- 
 ing a record and getting convictions, and hence 
 they are always looking for jobs and frame-ups. 
 If a police detective doesn't make arrests and send 
 a man to jail every once in a while there is no con- 
 clusive way for his superiors to be sure he isn't 
 loafing. 
 
 There are a very large number of persons who go 
 into the detective business for the same reason that 
 others enter the ministry — ^they can't make a living 
 at anything else. Provided he has squint eyes and 
 
DETECTIVES AND OTHERS 93 
 
 a dark complexion, almost anybody feels that he is 
 qualified to unravel the tangled threads of crime. 
 The fijst resource of the superannuated or discharged 
 police detective is to start an agency. Of course, he 
 may be first class in spite of these disqualifications, 
 but the presumption in the first instance is that he 
 is no longer alert or effective, and in-the second that 
 in one way or another he is not honest. Agencies re- 
 cruited from deposed and other ex-policemen usually 
 have all the faults of the poHce without any of their 
 virtues. There are many small agencies which do 
 rehable work, and there are a number of private de- 
 tectives in all the big cities who work single-handed 
 and achieve excellent results. However, if he expects 
 to accomplish anything by hiring detectives, the lay- 
 man or lawyer must first make sure of his agency or 
 his man. 
 
 One other feature of the detective business should 
 not be overlooked. In addition to charging for ser- 
 vices not actually rendered and expenses not actu- 
 ally incurred, there is in many cases a strong temp- 
 tation to betray the interests of the employer. A 
 private detective may, and usually does, become pos- 
 sessed of information even more valuable to the per- 
 son who is being watched than to the person to whom 
 he owes his allegiance. Unreliable rascals constantly 
 sell out to the other side and play both ends against 
 the middle. In this they resemble some of the fa- 
 mous diplomatic agents of history. And poHce de- 
 tectives employed to run down criminals and protect 
 society have been known instead to act as stalls for 
 
94 DETECTIVES AND OTHERS 
 
 bank burglars and (for a consideration) to assist 
 them to dispose of their booty and protect them from 
 arrest and capture. It has repeatedly happened that 
 reliable private detectives have discovered that the 
 poKce employed upon the same case have in reality 
 been tipping off the criminals as to what was being 
 done and coaching them as to their conduct. Of 
 covirse the natural jealousy existing between official 
 and unofficial agents of the law leads to a good many 
 unfoimded accusations of this character, but, on the 
 other hand, the fact that much of the most effective 
 pohce work is done by employing professional crimi- 
 nals to secure information and act as stool-pigeons 
 often results in a definite xmderstanding that the 
 latter shall be themselves protected in the quiet en- 
 joyment of their labors. The relations of the regular 
 pohce to crime, however, and the general subject of 
 police graft have little place in a chapter of this char- 
 acter. 
 
 The first question that usually arises is whether a 
 detective shall or shall not be employed at all in any 
 particular case. Usually the most important thing 
 is to find out what the real character, past, and asso- 
 ciations of some particular individual may be. WeU- 
 estabhshed detective agencies with offices throughout 
 the country are naturally in a better position to ac- 
 quire such information quickly than the private in- 
 dividual or lawyer, since they are on the spot and 
 have an organized staff containing the right sort of 
 men for the work. If the information hes in your 
 own city you can probably hire some one to get it or 
 
DETECTIVES AND OTHERS 95 
 
 ferret it out yourself quite as well, and much more 
 cheaply, than by employing their services. The leads 
 are few and generally simple. The subject's past, 
 employers and business associates, his landlords and 
 landladies, his friends and enemies, and his milkman 
 must be run down and interrogated. Perhaps his 
 personal movements must be watched. Any intelli- 
 gent feUow who is out of a job wiU do this for you 
 for about $5 per day and expenses. The agencies 
 usually charge from $6 to $8 (and up), and prefer 
 two men to one, as a matter of convenience and to 
 make sure that the subject is fully covered. If the 
 suspect is on the move and trains or steamships must 
 be met, you have practically no choice but to employ 
 a national agency. It alone has the proper plant 
 and equipment for the work. In an emergency, or- 
 ganization coimts more than anything else. Where 
 time is of the essence, the individual has no oppor- 
 tunity to hire his own men or start an organization 
 of his own. But if the matter is one where there is 
 plenty of leisure to act, you can usually do your own 
 detective work better and cheaper than any one else. 
 Regarding the work of the detective as a spy 
 (which probably constitutes seventy-five per cent of 
 his employment to-day), few persons realize how 
 widely such services are being utilized. The insig- 
 nificant old Irishwoman who stumbles against you 
 in the department store is possibly watching with 
 her cloudy but eagle eye for shoplifters. The tired- 
 looking man on the street-car may, in fact, be a pro- 
 fessional "spotter." The stout youth with the jnnce 
 
96 DETECTIVES AND OTHERS 
 
 nez who is examining the wedding presents is perhaps 
 a central-office man. All this you know or may sus- 
 pect. But you are not so likely to be aware that the 
 floor-walker himseK is the agent of a rival concern 
 placed in the department store to keep track, not 
 only of prices but of whether or not the wholesalers 
 are Uving up to their agreements in regard to the fur- 
 nishing of particular kinds of goods only to one 
 house; or that the conductor on the car is a paid de- 
 tective of the company, whose principal duty is not 
 to collect fares, but to report the doings of the unions; 
 or that the gentleman who is accidentally introduced 
 to you at the wedding breakfast is employed by a 
 board of directors to get a line on your host's business 
 associates and social companions. 
 
 In the great struggle between capital and labor, 
 each side has expended large sums of money in em- 
 ploying confederates to secure secret information as 
 to the plans and doings of the enemy. Almost every 
 labor union has its Judas, and many a secretary to a 
 capitahst is in the secret employment of a labor imion. 
 The railroads must be kept informed of what is going 
 on, and, if necessary, they import a man from another 
 part of the country to join the local organization. 
 Often such men, on account of their force and intelU- 
 gence, are elected to high office in the brotherhoods 
 whose secrets they are hired to betray. Practically 
 every big manufacturing plant in the United States 
 has on its pay-rolls men acting as engineers, foremen, 
 or laborers who are drawing from $80 to $100 per 
 month as detectives either (1) to keep their employers 
 
DETECTIVES AND OTHERS 97 
 
 informed as to the workings of the labor unions, (2) 
 to report to the directors the actual conduct of the 
 business by its salaried officers, superintendents, and 
 overseers, or (3) to ascertain and report to outside 
 competing concerns the methods and processes made 
 use of, the materials utiUzed, and the exact cost of 
 production. 
 
 There are detectives among the chambermaids and 
 bellboys in the hotels, and also among the guests; 
 there are detectives on the passenger lists and in the 
 cardrooms of the Atlantic liners; the colored porter 
 on the private car, the butler at your friend's house, 
 the chorus girl on Broadway, the clerk in the law 
 office, the employee in the commercial agency, may 
 all be drawing pay in the interest of some one else, 
 who may be either a transportation company, a 
 stock-broker, a rival financier, a yellow newspaper, 
 an injured or even an. erring wife, a grievance com- 
 mittee, or a competing concern; and the duties of 
 these persons may and will range from the theft of 
 mailing-lists, books, and papers, and (in the case of 
 the newspaper) of private letters, up to genuine de- 
 tective work requiring some real ability. 
 
 Apart from the hired thieves above referred to, 
 some yellow jomnals employ men to work upon the 
 various "mystery stories" that from time to time 
 arouse the attention of the pubhc, who often ac- 
 complish as good results as the police. I should, 
 however, place one limitation upon this general 
 statement, which is that, as the object of the news- 
 paper is usually quite as much to keep the story 
 
98 DETECTIVES AND OTHERS 
 
 alive as to solve the mystery, the papers are apt to 
 find startling significance in details of slight impor- 
 tance. While we are speaking of newspapers, it 
 may not be out of place to suggest that their activ- 
 ity is such that there are few general evils left un- 
 disclosed and few promiaent men the privacy of 
 whose lives is not known in the editorial rooms. 
 When lurid tales are told of the secret doings of Mr. 
 So and So and the Hon. This and That, you may rest 
 assured that the greater the desirabihty of those yams 
 as copy for the big daihes, the less hkely they are to 
 have any foundation in fact. The eye of the city 
 editor is in every place discerning the evil if not the 
 good. Indeed, it is almost imnecessary for the papers 
 to hire spies, since self-constituted ones are ready at 
 any moment to bargain with them for stolen goods 
 and ruined reputations. 
 
 Detective work of the sort which involves the be- 
 trayal of confidences and friendships naturally ex- 
 cites our aversion — ^yet in many cases the end un- 
 doubtedly justifies the means employed, and often 
 there is no other way to avert disaster and prevent 
 fiendish crimes. Sometimes, on the other hand, the 
 information sought is purely for mercenary or even 
 less worthy reasons, and those engaged in these imder- 
 takings range from rascals of the lowest type to men 
 who are ready to risk death for the cause which they 
 represent and who are really heroes of a high order. 
 One of the latter with whom I happened to be thrown 
 professionally was a young fellow of about twenty 
 named Guthrie. 
 
DETECTIVES AND OTHERS 99 
 
 It was during a great strike, and outrages were 
 being committed all over the city of New^York by- 
 dynamiters supposed to be in the employ of the 
 unions. Young Guthrie, who was a reckless dare- 
 devil, offered his services to the employers, and agreed 
 (for a trifling compensation) to join one of the local 
 unions and tiy to find out who were the men blowing 
 up ofiice buildings in process of construction and 
 otherwise terrorizing the inhabitants of the city. The 
 story of his success deserves a chapter by itself, and 
 it is enough here to state that he appUed for member- 
 ship in the organization, and by giving evidence of 
 his courage and fiber managed to secure a place as a 
 volunteer in the dynamiting squad. So cleverly did 
 he pass himself off as a bitter enemy of capital that 
 he was entrusted with secrets of the utmost value and 
 took part in making the plans and procuring the 
 dynamite to execute them. The quality of his nerve 
 (as well as his foolhardiness) is shown by the fact 
 that he once carried a dress-suit case full of the ex- 
 plosive around the city, jumping on and off street 
 cars, and dodging vehicles. When the proper mo- 
 ment came and the dynamite had been placed in 
 an uncompleted building on Twenty-second Street, 
 Guthrie gave the signal and the police arrested the 
 dynamiters — all of them, including Guthrie, who was 
 placed with the rest in a cell in the Tombs and con- 
 tinued to report to the district attorney all the in- 
 formation which he thus secured from his unsuspect- 
 ing associates. Indeed, it was hard to convince the 
 authorities that Guthrie was a spy and not a mere 
 
100 DETECTIVES AND OTHERS 
 
 accomplice who had turned State's evidence, a dis- 
 tinction of far-reaching legal significance so far as 
 his evidence was concerned. 
 
 The final episode in the drama was the unearthing 
 by the pohce of Hoboken of the secret cache of the 
 dynamiters, containing a large quantity of the ex- 
 plosive. Guthrie's instructions as to how they should 
 find it read hke a page from Poe's "Gold Bug." 
 You had to go at night to a place where a lonely road 
 crossed the Erie Railroad tracks in the Hackensack 
 meadows, and mark the spot where the shadow of a 
 telegraph pole (cast by an arc Hght) fell on a stone 
 wall.' ;This you must climb and walk so many paces 
 north, turn and go so many feet west, and then north 
 again. You then came to a white stone, from which 
 you laid your course through more latitude and longi- 
 tude until you were right over the spot. The police 
 of Hoboken did as directed, and after tacking roimd 
 and roimd the field, found the dynamite. Of course, 
 the xmion said the whole thing was a plant, and that 
 Guthrie had put the dynamite in the field himself at 
 the instigation of his employers, but before the case 
 came to trial both dynamiters pleaded guilty and 
 went to Siag Sing, One of them turned out to be an 
 ex-convict, a burglar. I often wonder where Guthrie 
 is now. He certainly cared little for his life. Per- 
 haps he is down in Venezeula or Mexico. He could 
 never be aught than a soldier of fortune. But for a 
 long time the employers thought that Guthrie was 
 a detective sent by the unions to compromise them 
 in the very dynamiting they were trjdng to stop! 
 
DETECTIVES AND OTHERS 101 
 
 I once had a particularly dangerous and unfor- 
 tunate case where a private client was being black- 
 mailed by a half-crazy ruffian who had never seen 
 him, but had selected him arbitrarily as a person 
 likely to give up money. The blackmailer was a Ger- 
 man Socialist, who was out of emplojmient — a man 
 of desperate character. He had made up his mind 
 that the world owed him a Hving, and he had decided 
 that the easiest way to get it was to make some 
 more prosperous person give him a thousand dollars 
 vmder threat of being exposed as an enemy of society. 
 
 The charge was so absm-d as to be almost ludicrous, 
 but had my client caused the blackmailer's arrest 
 the matter wotild have been the subject of endless 
 newspaper notoriety and comment. It was therefore 
 thought wise to make use of other means, and I pro- 
 cured the assistance of a young German-American 
 of my acquaintance, who, in the guise of a vaudeville 
 artist seeking a job, went to the blackmailer's board- 
 ing-house and pretended to be looking for an actor 
 friend with a name not unlike that of the criminal. 
 
 After two or three visits he managed to scrape 
 an acquaintance with the blackmailer and thereafter 
 spent much time with him. Both were out of work, 
 both were Germans, and both liked beer. My friend 
 had just enough money to satisfy this latter craving. 
 In a month or so they were iatimate friends and used 
 to go fishing together down the bay. At last, after 
 many months, the criminal disclosed to the detective 
 his plan of blackmailing my client, and suggested 
 that as two heads were better than one they had 
 
 -■]/}' 
 
102 DETECTIVES AND OTHERS 
 
 better make it a joint venture. The detective pre- 
 tended to balk at the idea at first, but was finally- 
 persuaded, and at the other's request undertook the 
 delivery of the blackmailing letters to my client! 
 Inside of three weeks he had in his possession enough 
 evidence in the criminal's oim handwriting to send 
 him to prison for the rest of his life. When at last 
 the detective disclosed his identity the blackmailer 
 at first refused to believe him, and then literally 
 rolled on the floor in his agony and fear at discovering 
 how he had been hoodwinked. The next day he dis- 
 appeared and has not been heard of since, but his 
 letters are in my vault, ready to be used if he again 
 puts in an appearance. 
 
 The records of the poHce and of the private agen- 
 cies contain many instances where murderers have 
 confessed their guilt long after the crime to supposed 
 friends, who were in reaUty decoys placed there for 
 that very purpose. It is a peculiarity of criminals 
 that they cannot keep their secrets locked in their 
 own breasts. The impulse to confession is universal, 
 particularly in women. Egotism has some part in 
 this, but the chief element is the desire for compan- 
 ionship. Criminals have a horror of djdng under an 
 alias. The dignity of identity appeals even to the 
 tramp. This impulse leads oftentimes to the most 
 luinecessary and suicidal disclosures. The murderer 
 who has planned and executed a diabolical homicide 
 and who has retired to obscurity and safety will very 
 likely in course of time make a clean breast of it to 
 some one whom he beUeves to be his friend. He 
 
DETECTIVES AND OTHERS 103 
 
 wants to "get it off his chest," to talk it over, to dis- 
 cuss its fine points, to boast of how clever he was, to 
 ask for unnecessary advice about his conduct in the 
 future, to have at least one other person in the world 
 who has seen his soul's nakedness. 
 
 The interesting feature of such confessions from 
 a legal point of view is that, no matter how circum- 
 stantial they may be, they are not usually of them- 
 selves sufl&cient imder oiu- law to warrant a convic- 
 tion. The admission or confession of a defendant 
 needs legal corroboration. This corroboration is 
 often very difficult to find, and frequently cannot be 
 seciu"ed at all. This provision of the statutes is 
 doubtless a wise one to prevent hysterical, suicidal, 
 egotistical, and semi-insane persons from meeting 
 death in the electric chair or on the gaUows, but it 
 often results in the guilty going unpunished. Per- 
 sonally, I have never known a criminal to confess 
 a crime of which he was innocent. The nearest thing 
 to it in my experience is when one criminal, jointly 
 guilty with another and sure of conviction, has drawn 
 lots with his pal, lost, confessed, and in the confes- 
 sion exculpated his companion. 
 
 In the police organization of almost every large 
 city there are a few men who are genuinely gifted 
 for the work of detection. Such an one was Petrosino, 
 a great detective, and an honest, imselfish, and heroic 
 man, who united indefatigable patience and industry 
 with reasoning powers of a high order. The most 
 thrilling evening of my life was when my wife and 
 I listened before a crackling fire in my library to 
 
104 DETECTIVES AND OTHERS 
 
 Joe's story of the Van Cortlandt Park murder, the 
 night before I was going to prosecute the case. Sit- 
 ting stifiBy in an arm-chair, his great, ugly moon-face 
 expressionless save for an occasional flash from his 
 black eyes, Petrosino recounted slowly and ac- 
 curately how, by means of a single sHp of paper bear- 
 ing the penciled name "Sabbatto Gizzi, P. 0. Box 
 239, LambertviUe, N. J.," he had run down the un- 
 known murderer of an imknown Italian stabbed to 
 death in the park's shrubbery. The paper contained 
 neither the name of the criminal nor his victim, 
 but by means of this slender clue he had gone to 
 LambertviUe and found an ItaHan who had identi- 
 fied the deceased as a man who had left Lambert- 
 viUe for New York in the company of another Italian 
 named StroUo. Petrosino interviewed Strollo, who 
 admitted the trip but denied any knowledge of his 
 companion's death. He had, he said, turned him 
 over to his brother, for whom Strollo had been 
 searching. 
 
 In StroUo's pocket Petrosino found a letter to the 
 brother from Tony TorsieUi, the murdered man. It 
 was in StroUo's own handwriting and enclosed in an 
 envelope addressed to Torsidli himself at Lambert- 
 viUe. This envelope bore a red two-cent stamp. On 
 the basis of this letter, aided by StroUo's contradic- 
 tory statements, Petrosino reconstructed the murder 
 and demonstrated that there was no brother, that 
 StroUo had invented him for the purpose of luring 
 TorsieUi to New York, and that he had acted as 
 amanuensis for TorsieUi and carried on the corre- 
 
DETECTIVES AND OTHERS 105 
 
 spondence for both. The envelope addressed in 
 Strollo's handwriting to TorsielK at Lanibertville was 
 the key to the whole mystery. There was no reason 
 why StroUo should be writing to his own friend whom 
 he saw daUy and who lived beside him in the same 
 town. Neither, argued Petrosino, would there be 
 any reason for putting on a two-cent stamp in a place 
 so small as to have no mail delivery. Ergo, the enve- 
 lope must have been intended to create the impression 
 that it had been mailed from some other place, by 
 another person — from whom but the fictitious 
 brother? Bit by bit Petrosino built up a case en- 
 tirely out of circumstantial evidence that demon- 
 strated StroUo's guilt to a mathematical certainty. 
 So vivid was Petrosino's account of his labors that 
 in opening the case next day to the jury I had but to 
 repeat the story I had heard the night before. StroUo 
 was convicted after a week's trial before Judge O'Gor- 
 man in the Criminal Term of the Supreme Court 
 and paid the penalty of his treachery in the electric 
 chair. For him I felt not one pang of pity or remorse. 
 But during the preparation for the case the func- 
 tion of the detective as a decoy was demonstrated in 
 a most effective manner. StroUo was confined in the 
 House of Detention and a detective from head-quarters 
 was introduced there as an ostensible prisoner, under 
 the name of SUvio. StroUo and he became great 
 friends, and when the former was removed to the 
 Tombs the murderer wrote elaborately to the detec- 
 tive, requesting him to testify as a witness at the trial 
 on his behalf and instructing him what to say in order 
 
106 DETECTIVES AND OTHERS 
 
 to establish an alibi. Those letters were the last nails 
 in StroUo's coffin. After his conviction they were 
 stolen by somebody and could not be included in the 
 case on appeal, for which reason the court had some 
 doubt as to whether the conviction shotild be aflfirmed. 
 Before the Court of Appeals rendered its decision, 
 however, I foimd, while cleaning out my safe, photo- 
 graphs of the letters which I had had taken as a pre- 
 cautionary measure, but the existence of which I 
 had forgotten. I now have every important docu- 
 ment that comes into my hands as evidence photo- 
 graphed as a matter of course. 
 
 Petrosino's physical characteristics were so pro- 
 nounced that he was probably as widely, if not more 
 widely, known than any other Italian in New York. 
 He was short and heavy, with enormous shoulders 
 and a bull neck, on which was placed a great round 
 head like a summer squash. His face was pock- 
 marked, and he talked with a deUberation that was 
 due to his desire for accuracy, but which at times 
 might have been suspected to arise from some other 
 cause. He rarely smiled and went methodically 
 about his business, which was to drive the Italian 
 criminals out of the city and country. Of course, 
 being a marked man in more senses than one, it was 
 practically impossible to disguise himself, and, ac- 
 cordingly, he had to rely upon his own investigations 
 and detective powers, supplemented by the efforts 
 of the trained men in the Italian branch, many of 
 whom are detectives of a high order of ability. If 
 the life of Petrosino were to be written, it would be 
 
DETECTIVES AND OTHERS 107 
 
 a book unique in the history of criminology and crime, 
 for this man was probably the only great detective 
 of the world to find his career in a foreign country 
 amid criminals of his own race. 
 
 I have instanced Petrosino as an example of a 
 poUce detective of a very unusual type, but I have 
 known several other men on the New York PoHce 
 Force of real genius ia their own particular lines of 
 work. One of these is an Irishman who makes a spe- 
 cialty of get-rich-quick men, oil and mining stock 
 operators, wire-tappers and their kin, and who 
 knows the antecedents and history of most of them 
 better than any other man in the coimtry. He is 
 ready to take the part of either a "sucker" or a fellow 
 crook, as the exigencies of the case may demand. 
 
 And then there was old Tom Byrnes, of whom 
 everybody knows. There are detectives — ^real ones 
 — on the poUce force of all the great cities of the world 
 to-day, most of them speciaKsts, a few of them 
 geniuses capable of undertaking the ferreting out of 
 any sort of mystery, but the last are rare. The police 
 detective usually lacks the training, education, and 
 social experience to make him effective in dealing 
 with the class of elite criminals who make high society 
 their field. Yet, of course, it is this class of crooks 
 who most excite our interest and who fill the pages 
 of popular detective fiction. 
 
 The head-quarters man has no time nor inclination 
 to follow the sporting duchess and the fictitious earl 
 who accompanies her in their picturesque wanderings 
 around the world. He is busy inside the confines 
 
108 DETECTIVES AND OTHERS 
 
 of his own country. Parents or children may dis- 
 appear, but the mere seeking of obhvion on their 
 part is no crime and does not concern him except by 
 special dispensation on the part of his superiors. 
 Divorced couples may steal their own children back 
 and forward, royalties may inadvertently involve 
 themselves with undesirables, governmental informa- 
 tion exude from State portals in a peculiar manner, 
 business secrets pass into the hands of rivals, race- 
 horses develop strange and untimely diseases, hus- 
 bands take long and mysterious trips from home — 
 a thousand exciting and worrjdng things may happen 
 to the astonishment, distress, or intense interest of 
 nations, governments, poUtical parties, or private in- 
 dividuals, which from their very nature are outside 
 the purview of the regular police. Here, then, is the 
 field of the secret agent or private detective, and here, 
 forsooth, is where the detective of genuine deductive 
 powers and the polished address of the so-caUed 
 "man of the world" is required. 
 
 There are two classes of cases where a private de- 
 tective must needs be used, if indeed any professional 
 assistance is to be called in: first, where the person 
 whose identity is sought to be discovered or whose 
 activities are sought to be terminated is not a crim- 
 inal or has committed no crime, and second, where, 
 though a crime has been committed, the injured 
 parties cannot afford to undertake a pubHc prosecu- 
 tion. 
 
 For example, if you are receiving anonymous let- 
 ters, the writer of which accuses you of all sorts of 
 
DETECTIVES AND OTHERS 109 
 
 unpleasant things, you would, of course, much pre- 
 fer to find out who it is and stop him quietly than 
 to turn over the correspondence to the police and 
 let the writer's attorneys publicly cross-examine you 
 at his trial as to your past career. Even if a diamond 
 necklace is stolen from a family living on Fifth 
 Avenue, there is more than an even chance that the 
 owner will prefer to conceal her loss rather than to 
 have her picture in the morning paper. Yet she will 
 wish to find the necklace if she can. 
 
 When the matter has no criminal side at all, the 
 pohce caimot be availed of, although we sometimes 
 read that the oflacers of the local precinct have spent 
 many hours in trying to locate Mrs. So-and-So's 
 lost Pomeranian, or in performing other functions 
 of an essentially private nature — ^most generously. 
 But if, for example, your daughter is made the recipi- 
 ent, almost daily, of anonymous gifts of jewelry 
 which arrive by mail, express, or messenger, and you 
 are anxious to discover the identity of her adnairer 
 and return them, you will probably wish to engage 
 outside assistance. 
 
 Where will you seek it? You can do one of two 
 things: go to a big agency and secure the services of 
 the right man, or engage such a man outside who may 
 or may not be a professional detective, I have fre- 
 quently utilized with success in peculiar and difficult 
 cases the services of men whom I knew to be common- 
 sense persons, with a natural taste for ferreting out 
 mysteries, but who were not detectives at all. Your 
 head book-keeper may have real talents in this direc- 
 
110 DETECTIVES AND OTHERS 
 
 tion — if he is not above using them. Naturally, the 
 first essential is brains — and if you can give the time 
 to the matter, your own head will probably be the 
 best one for your purposes. If, then, you are willing 
 to undertake the job yourself, all you need is some 
 person or persons to carry out your instructions, and 
 such are by no means difficult to find. I have had 
 many a case run]down by my own office force — clerks, 
 lawyers, and stenographers, all taking a turn at it. 
 Why not? Is the professional sleuth working on a 
 fixed salary for a regular agency and doing a dozen 
 different jobs each month as likely to bring to bear 
 upon your own private problem as much intelli- 
 gence as you yourself? 
 
 There is no mystery about such work, except what 
 the detective himself sees fit to enshroud it with. 
 Most of us do detective work all the time without 
 being conscious of it. Simply because the matter 
 concerns the theft of a pearl, or the betrajdng of a 
 business or professional secret, or the disappearance 
 of a friend, the opinion of a stranger becomes no 
 more valuable. And the chances are equal that the 
 stranger will make a bungle of it. 
 
 Many of the best available detectives are men who 
 work by themselves without any permanent staff, 
 and who have their own regular cHents, generally 
 law firms and corporations. Almost any attorney 
 knows several such, and the chief advantage of em- 
 ploying one of them lies in the fact that you can 
 learn just what their abilities are by personal expe- 
 rience. They usually command a high rate of re- 
 
DETECTIVES AND OTHERS 111 
 
 muneration, but deductive ability and resourcefid- 
 ness are so rare that they are at a premium and can 
 only be secured by paying it. These men are able, 
 if necessary, to assume the character of a doctor, 
 traveller, man-about-town, or business agent with- 
 out wearing in their lapels a sign that they are de- 
 tectives, and they will reason ahead of the other fel- 
 low and can sometimes calculate pretty closely what 
 he will do. Twenty-five dollars a day will generally 
 hire the best of them, and they are well worth it. 
 
 The detective business swarms with men of doubt- 
 ful honesty and morals, who are under a constant 
 temptation to charge for services not rendered and 
 expenses not incurred, who are accustomed to ex- 
 ;aggeration if not to perjury, and who have neither 
 'the inclination nor the ability to do competent work. 
 
 Once they get their clutches on a wealthy chent, 
 they resemble the shyster lawyer in their efforts to 
 bleed him by stimulating his fears of publicity and 
 by holding out false hopes of success, and thus pro- 
 longing their period of service. An unscrupulous de- 
 tective will, almost as a matter of course, work on 
 two jobs at once and charge all his time to each chent. 
 He will constantly report progress when nothing has 
 been accomplished, and his expenses wiU fill pages 
 of his notebook. Meantime his daily reports will 
 fall like a shower of autumn leaves. In no profes- 
 sion is it more essential to know the man who is 
 working for you. If you need a detective, get the 
 best you can find, put a limit on the expense, and 
 give him your absolute confidence. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 DETECTIVES WHO DETECT 
 
 In the preceding chapter the writer discussed at 
 some length the real, as distinguished from the 
 fancied, attributes of detectives in general, and the 
 weaknesses as well as the virtues of the so-called de- 
 tective " agency." There are in the city of New York 
 at the present time about one hundred and fifty 
 licensed detectives. Under the detective license laws 
 each of these has been required to file with the State 
 comptroller written evidences of his good character, 
 competency, and integrity, approved by five reputa- 
 ble freeholders of his county, and to give bond in the 
 sum of two thousand dollars. He also has to pay a 
 license fee of one hundred dollars per annum, but this 
 enables him to employ as many "operators" as he 
 chooses. In other words, the head of the agency 
 may be a high-class man and his agents wholly 
 undesirable citizens. How often this is the case is 
 known to none better than the heads themselves. 
 The strength and efficiency of a detective agency 
 does not He in the name at the top of its letter-paper, 
 but in the unknown personnel of the men who are 
 doing or shirking the work. I beheve that most of 
 the principals of the many agencies throughout the 
 United States are animated by a serious desire to 
 
 112 
 
DETECTIVES WHO DETECT 113 
 
 give their clients a full return for their money and 
 loyal and honest service. But the best intentions 
 in the world cannot make up for the lack of xmtiring 
 vigilance in supervising the men who are being em- 
 ployed in the client's service. 
 
 It is right here that the "national" has an im- 
 mense advantage over the small agency which cannot 
 afford to keep a large staff of men constantly on 
 hand, but is forced to engage them temporarily as 
 they may be needed. The "national" agency can 
 shift its employees from place to place as their ser- 
 vices are required, and the advantages of centraliza- 
 tion are felt as much in this sort of work as in any 
 other industry. The licensed detective who sends 
 out a hurry call for assistants is apt to be able to 
 get only men whom he would otherwise not employ. 
 In this chapter, the word "national," as apphed to 
 a detective agency, refers not to the title xmder 
 which such an agency may do its business, but to 
 the fact that it is organized and equipped to render 
 services all over the coimtry. 
 
 In this connection it is worth noticing that the 
 best detective agencies train their own operators, 
 selecting them from picked material. The candidate 
 must as a rule be between twenty and thirty-five 
 years of age, sound of body, and reasonably intel- 
 ligent. He gets pretty good wages from the start. 
 From the comparatively easy work of watching or 
 "locating," he is advanced through the more diffi- 
 cult varieties of "shadowing" and "trailing," imtil 
 eventually he may develop into a first-class man 
 
114 DETECTIVES WHO DETECT 
 
 who will be set to unravel a murder mystery or to 
 "rope" a professional criminal. But with years of 
 training the best material makes few real detectives, 
 and the real detective remains in fact the man who sits 
 at the mahogany desk in the central office and presses 
 the row of mother of pearl buttons in front of him. 
 
 If you know the heads or superintendents of the 
 large agencies you will find that the "star" cases, of 
 which they like to talk, are, for the most part, the 
 pursuit and capture of forgers and murderers. The 
 former, as a rule, are "spotted" and "trailed" to 
 their haunts, and when sufficient evidence has been 
 obtained the pohce are notified, and a raid takes 
 place, or the arrest is made, by the State authorities. 
 In the case of a murderer, in a majority of cases, his 
 capture is the result of skilful "roping" by an astute 
 detective who manages to get into his confidence. 
 For example, a murder is committed by an Italian 
 miner. Let us suppose he has killed his "boss," or 
 even the superintendent or owner. He disappears. 
 As the reader knows, the Italians are so secretive 
 that it is next to impossible to secm-e any informa- 
 tion — even from the relatives of a murdered man. 
 
 The first thing is to locate the assassin. An Italian 
 detective is sent into the mine as a laborer. Months 
 may elapse before he gets on familiar or intimate 
 terms with his fellows. All the time he is Hstening 
 and watching. Presently he hears something that 
 indicates that the murderer is conmnmicating with 
 one of his old friends either directly or through third 
 parties. It is then generally only a question of time 
 
DETECTIVES WHO DETECT 115 
 
 before his whereabouts are ascertained. Once he is 
 "located" the same method is followed in securing 
 additional evidence or material in the nature of a 
 confession or admission tending to establish guilt. 
 Having previously "roped" the murderer's friends, 
 the detective now proceeds to the more difi&cult task 
 of "roping" the murderer himself. Of course, the 
 life of a detective in a Pennsylvania coal mine would 
 be valueless if his identity were discovered, and yet 
 the most daring pieces of detective work are con- 
 stantly being performed under these and similar 
 conditions. Where the criminal is not known, the 
 task becomes far more difficult and at times exceed- 
 ingly dangerous. 
 
 One of my own friends, an Italian gentleman, 
 spent several months in the different mines of this 
 country, where Italians are largely employed, in- 
 vestigating conditions and ascertaining for the bene- 
 fit of his government the extent to which anarchy 
 was prevalent. It was necessary for him to secure 
 work as a miner at the lowest wages and to disguise 
 himseK in such a way that it wovld be impossible for 
 anybody to detect his true character. Fortimately, 
 the great diversity of Itahan dialects facilitated his 
 efforts and enabled him to pass himself off as from 
 another part of the country than his comrades. Hav- 
 ing made his preparations he came to New York as 
 an inunigrant and joined a party of newly arrived 
 Italians on their way to the coal mines of West Vir- 
 ginia. Without following him further, it is enough 
 to say that during his service in the mines he over- 
 
116 DETECTIVES WHO DETECT 
 
 heard much that was calculated to interest exceed- 
 ingly the authorities at Rome. Had his disguise been 
 penetrated the quick thrust of a five-inch blade would 
 have ended his career. He would never have returned 
 to New York. There would only have been another 
 dead "Dago" miner. The local coroner would have 
 driven up in his buggy, looked at the body, examined 
 the clean, deep wound in the abdomen, shrugged his 
 shoulders, and empanelled a heterogeneous jury who 
 would have returned a verdict to the effect that "de- 
 ceased came to his death through a stab wound in- 
 flicted by some person to the jury unknown." My 
 friend was not a professional detective, but the re- 
 cital of his experiences was enough to fill me with 
 new respect for those engaged in the "man hunt" 
 business among the haK civilized miners of the coal 
 regions. 
 
 But the work of even the "national" agencies is 
 not of the kind which the novel-reading public gen- 
 erally associates with detectives — ^that is to say, it 
 rarely deals with the unravelling of "mysteries," 
 except the identity of passers of fraudulent paper 
 and occasional murderers. The protection of the 
 banks is naturally the most important work that 
 such an agency can perform. 
 
 The National Bankers' Association consists of 
 eleven thousand members. "Pinkerton's Bank and 
 Bankers' Protection" has a large organization of 
 subscribers. These devote themselves to identi- 
 fying and running down all criminals whose activi- 
 ties are dangerous to them. Here the agency and the 
 
DETECTIVES WHO DETECT 117 
 
 police work hand in hand, exchanging photographs 
 of crooks and suspects and keeping closely informed 
 as to each other's doings. Yet there is no official 
 connection between any detective agency and the 
 police of any city. It is an almost imiversal rule that 
 a private detective shall not make an arrest. The 
 reasons for this are manifold. In the first place, the 
 private detective has neither the general authority 
 nor the facilities for the manual detention of a crim- 
 inal. A blue coat and brass buttons, to say nothing 
 of a night stick, are often invaluable stage properties 
 in the last act of the melodrama. And as the criminal 
 authorities are eventually to deal with the defendant 
 anyway, it is just as well if they come into the case 
 as soon as may be. It goes without saying, of course, 
 that a detective per se has no more right to make an 
 arrest than any private citizen — nor has a police- 
 man, for that matter, save in exceptional cases. The 
 officer is valuable for his dignity, avoirdupois, "brace- 
 lets," and other accessories. The police thus get the 
 credit of many arrests in difficult cases where aU the 
 work has been done by private detectives, and it is 
 good business for the latter to keep mum about it. 
 
 One of the chief assets of the big agency is its ac- 
 cumvilated information concerning aU sorts of pro- 
 fessional criminals. Its galleries are quite as com- 
 plete as those of the local head-quarters, for a con- 
 stant exchange of art objects is going on with the 
 police throughout the world. And as the agency is 
 protecting banks all over the United States it has 
 greater interest in all bank burglars as a class than 
 
118 DETECTIVES WHO DETECT 
 
 the police of any particular city who are only con- 
 cerned with the burglars who (as one might say) 
 burgle in their particular burg. Thus, you are more 
 likely to find a detective from a national agency fol- 
 lowing a forger to Australasia or Polynesia than you 
 are a sleuth from 300 Mulberry Street, New York. 
 
 The best agencies absolutely decline to touch di- 
 vorce and matrimonial cases of any sort. It does 
 not do a detective agency any good to have its men 
 constantly upon the witness stand subject to attack, 
 with a consequent possible reflection upon their 
 probity of character and truthfulness. Moreover, a 
 good detective is too valuable a person to be wasting 
 his time in the court-room. In the ordinary divorce 
 case the detective, having procured his evidence, is 
 obliged to remain on tap and subject to call as a wit- 
 ness for at least three or four months, during which 
 time he cannot be sent away on distant work. 
 Neither can the customer be charged ordinarily for 
 waiting time, and apart from its malodorous char- 
 acter the business is not desirable from a financial 
 point of view. 
 
 The national agencies prefer clean criminal work, 
 murder cases, and general investigating. They no 
 longer imdertake any policing, strike-breaking, or 
 guarding. The most ridiculous misinformation in 
 regard to their participation in this sort of work has 
 been spread broadcast largely by jealous enemies 
 and by the labor unions. 
 
 By way of illustration, one Thomas Beet, describ- 
 ing himself as an English detective, contributed an 
 
DETECTIVES WHO DETECT 119 
 
 article to the New York Tribune of September 16, 
 1906, in which he said: 
 
 "In one of the greatest of our strikes, that involv- 
 ing the steel industry, over two thousand armed de- 
 tectives were employed supposedly to protect prop- 
 erty, while several hundred more were scattered in 
 the ranks of strikers as workmen. Many of the latter 
 became officers in the labor bodies, helped to make 
 laws for the organizations, made incendiary speeches, 
 cast their votes for the most radical movements 
 made by the strikers, participated in and led bodies 
 of the members in the acts of lawlessness that event- 
 ually caused the sending of State troops and the 
 declaration of martial law. While doing this, these 
 spies within the ranks were making daily reports of 
 the plans and purposes of the strikers. To my 
 knowledge, when lawlessness was at its height and 
 murder ran riot, these men wore little patches of 
 white on the lapels of their coats so that their fellow 
 detectives of the two thousand would not shoot them 
 down by mistake." 
 
 He, of course, referred to the great strike at Home- 
 stead, Pennsylvania, in 1892. In point of fact, there 
 were only six private detectives engaged on the side 
 of the employers at that time, and these were there 
 to assist the local authorities in taking charge of six 
 hundred and fifty watchmen, and to help place the 
 latter upon the property of the steel company. These 
 watchmen were under the direction of the sheriff and 
 sworn in as peace officers of the county. Mr. Beet 
 seems to have confused his history and mixed up the 
 
120 DETECTIVES WHO DETECT 
 
 white handkerchief of the Huguenots of Nantes with 
 the strike-breakers of Pennsylvania. It is needless 
 to repeat (as Mr. Robert A. Pinkerton stated at the 
 time) that the white label story is ridiculously un- 
 true, and that it was the strikers who attacked the 
 watchmen, and not the watchmen the strikers. One 
 striker and one watchman were killed. 
 
 But this attack of Mr. Beet upon his own profes- 
 sion, imder the guise of being an English detective 
 (it developed that he was an ex-divorce detective 
 from New York City), was not confined to his re- 
 marks, about inciting wanton murder. On the con- 
 trary, he alleged (as one having authority and not 
 merely as a scribe) that American detective agencies 
 were practically nothing but blackmailing concerns, 
 which used the information secured in a professional 
 capacity to extort money from their own chents. 
 
 "Think of the so-called detective," says Mr. Beet, 
 "whose agency pays him two dollars or two dollars 
 and fifty cents a day, being' engaged upon confiden- 
 tial work and in the possession of secrets that he 
 knows are worth money! Is it any wonder that so 
 many cases are sold out by employees, even when the 
 agencies are honest?" 
 
 We are constrained to answer that it is no more 
 wonderful than that any person earning the same 
 sum should remain honest when he might so easily 
 turn thief. As the writer has himself pointed out in 
 these pages, there are hundreds of so-called detective 
 agencies which are but traps for the guileless citi- 
 zen who calls upon them for aid. But there are many 
 
DETECTIVES WHO DETECT 121 
 
 which are as honestly conducted as any other variety 
 of legitimate business. I do not know Mr. Beet's 
 personal experience, but it appears to have been un- 
 fortunate. At any rate, his diatribe is unfounded 
 and false, and the worst feature of it is his assertion 
 that detective agencies make a business of manu- 
 facturing cases when there happen to be none on 
 hand. 
 
 "Soon," says he, "there were not enough cases to 
 go around, and then with the aid of spies and inform- 
 ers the unscrupulous detectives began to make cases. 
 Agencies began to work up evidence against persons 
 and then resorted to blackmail, or else approached 
 those to whom the information might be valuable, and 
 by caxeivl manoeuvring had themselves retained to 
 unravel the case. This brought into existence hordes 
 of professional informers who secured the opening 
 wedges for the fake agencies. Men and women, many 
 of them of some social standing, made it a practice 
 to pry around for secrets which might be valuable; 
 spies kept up their work in large business estabhsh- 
 ments and began to hatmt the cafes and resorts of 
 doubtful reputation, on the watch for persons of 
 wealth and prominence who might be f ooKsh enough 
 to place themselves in compromising circumstances. 
 Even the servants in wealthy families soon learned 
 that certain secrets of the master and mistress could 
 be turned to profitable accoimt. We shudder when 
 we hear of the system of espionage maintained in 
 Russia, while in the large American cities, unnoticed, 
 are organizations of spies and informers on every 
 
122 DETECTIVES WHO DETECT 
 
 hand who spend their lives digging pitfalls for the 
 unwary who can afford to pay." 
 
 One would think that we were living in the days 
 of the Borgias! "Ninety per cent," says Mr. Beet, 
 "of private detective agencies are rotten to the core 
 and simply exist and thrive upon a foundation of 
 dishonesty, deceit, conspiracy, and treachery to the 
 pubhc in general and their own patrons in particular. 
 There are detectives at the heads of prominent agencies 
 in this country whose pictures ad&m the Rogues' 
 Gallery ; men who have served time in various prisons 
 for almost every crime on the calendar." 
 
 This harrowing picture has the modicum of truth 
 that makes it insidiously dangerous. But this last 
 extravagance betrays the denunciator. One would 
 be interested to have this past-master of overstate- 
 ment mention the names of these distinguished crooks 
 that head the prominent agencies. Their exposure, if 
 true, would not be hbellous, and it would seem that 
 he had performed but half his duty to the pubHc in 
 refraining from giving this important, if not vital, 
 information. 
 
 I know several of these gentlemen whose pictures 
 I feel confident do not appear in and (much less) do 
 not adorn the Rogues' Gallery, and who have not 
 been, as yet, convicted of crime. A client is as safe 
 in the hands of a good detective agency as he is in 
 the hands of a good lawyer; he should know his 
 agency, that is all — ^just as he should know his lawyer. 
 The men at the head of the big agencies generally 
 take the same pride in their work as the members of 
 
DETECTIVES WHO DETECT 123 
 
 any learned profession. They know that a first-class 
 reputation for honesty is essential to their financial 
 success and that good will is their stock ia trade. 
 Take this away and they would have nothing. 
 
 In 1878 the founder of one of the most famous of 
 our national agencies promulgated in printed form 
 for the benefit of his employees what he called his 
 general principles. One of these was the following: 
 
 "This agency only offers its services at a stated 
 per diem for each detective employed on an opera- 
 tion, giving no guarantee of success, except in the 
 reputation for reliability and efficiency; and any 
 person in its service who shall, vmder any circum- 
 stances, permit himself or herself to receive a gift, 
 reward, or bribe shall be mstantly dismissed from 
 the service." 
 
 Another: 
 
 "The profession of the detective is a high and hon- 
 orable calling. Few professions excel it. He is an 
 officer of justice, and must himself be pure and above 
 reproach." 
 
 Again: 
 
 "It is an evidence of the unfitness of the detective 
 for his profession when he is compelled to resort to 
 the use of intoxicating liquors; and, indeed, the 
 strongest kind of evidence, if he continually resorts 
 to this evil practice. The detective must not do any- 
 thing to farther sink the criminal in vice or debauch- 
 ery, but, on the contrary, must seek to win his con- 
 fidence by endeavoring to elevate him, etc." 
 
 "Kindness and justice should go hand in hand, 
 whenever it is possible, in the dealings of the detec- 
 
124 DETECTIVES WHO DETECT 
 
 tive with the criminal. There is no human being so 
 degraded but there is some Httle bright spark of con- 
 science and of right still existing in him." 
 
 Last: 
 
 "The detective must, in every instance, report 
 everything which is favorable to the suspected party, 
 as well as everythiag which may be against him." 
 
 The man who penned these principles had had the 
 safety of Abraham Lincoln in his keeping; and these 
 simple statements of his faith are the best refutation 
 of the baseless assertions above referred to. 
 
 It may be that in those days the detection of crime 
 was a bit more elementary than at the present time. 
 One can hardly picture a modem sleuth delajdng 
 long in an attempt to evangelize his quarry, but these 
 general principles are the right stuff and shine like 
 good deeds in a naughty world. 
 
 As one peruses this Uttle pink pamphlet he is 
 constantly struck by the repeated references to the 
 detective as an actor. That was undoubtedly the 
 ancient concept of a sleuth. "He must possess, 
 also, the player's faculty of assuming any char- 
 acter that his case may require, and of acting it out 
 to the life with an ease and naturalness which shall 
 not be questioned." This somewhat large order is, 
 to our relief, qualified a httle later on. "It is not to 
 be expected, however," the author admits, "that 
 every detective shall possess these rare qualifica- 
 tions, although the more talented and versatile he is, 
 the higher will be the sphere of operation which he 
 will command." 
 
 The modem detective agency is conducted on 
 
DETECTIVES WHO DETECT 125 
 
 business principles and does not look for histrionic 
 talent or general versatility. As one of the heads of 
 a prominent agency said to me the other day: 
 
 "When we want a detective to take the part of 
 a plumber we get a plumber, and when we need one to 
 act as a boiler-maker we go out and get a real one — 
 if we haven't one on our pay rolls." 
 
 "But," I replied, "when you need a man to go into 
 a private family and pretend to be an Enghsh clergy- 
 man, or a French viscount, or a brilUant man of the 
 world — ^who do you send?" 
 
 The "head" smiled. 
 
 "The case hasn't arisen yet," said he. "When it 
 does I guess we'll get the real thing." 
 
 The national detective agency, with its thousands 
 of employees who have, most of them, grown up and 
 received their training in its service, is a powerful 
 organization, highly centralized, and having an im- 
 mense sinking fund of special knowledge and past 
 experience. This is the product of decades of patient 
 labor and minute record. The agency which offers 
 you the services of a Sherlock Holmes is a fraud, but 
 you can accept as genuine a proposition to run down 
 any man whose picture you maybe able to identify 
 in the gallery. The day of the impersonator is over. 
 The detective of this generation is a hard-headed 
 business man with a stout pair of legs. "* 
 
 This accumulated fund of information is the heri- 
 tage of an honest and long established industry. It 
 is seventy-five per cent of its capital. It is entirely 
 beyond the reach of the mushroom agency, which in 
 
126 DETECTIVES WHO DETECT 
 
 consequence has to accept less desirable retainers in- 
 volving no such requirements, or go to the wall. The 
 collection of photographs is almost priceless and 
 the cUppings, letters, and memoranda in the filing 
 cases only secondarily so. Very few of the "oper- 
 ators" pretend to anything but common-sense with, 
 perhaps, some special knowledge of the men they 
 are after. They are not clairvoyants or mystery 
 men, but they will tirelessly follow a crook until they 
 get him. They are the regular troops who take their 
 orders without question. The real "detective" is 
 the "boss" who directs them. 
 
 The reader can easily see that in all cases where a 
 crime, such as forgery, is concerned, once the identity 
 of the criminal is ascertained, half the work (or more 
 than half) is done. The agencies know the face and 
 record of practically every man who ever flew a bit 
 of bad paper in the United States, in England, or on 
 the Continent. If an old hand gets out of prison his 
 movements are watched imtil it is obvious that he 
 does not intend to resort to his old tricks. After 
 the criminal is known or "located," the "trailing" 
 begins and his "connections" are carefully studied. 
 This may or may not require what might be called 
 real detective work; that is to say, work requiring a 
 superior power of deducing conclusions from first- 
 hand information, coupled with xmusual skill in act- 
 ing upon them. Mere trailing is often simple, yet 
 sometimes very difficult. A great deal depends on 
 the operator's own peculiar information as to his 
 man's habits, haunts, and associates. It is very hard 
 
DETECTIVES WHO DETECT 127 
 
 to say in most cases just where mere knowledge ends 
 and detective work proper begins. As for disguises, 
 they are aknost unknown, except such as are neces- 
 sary to enable an operator to join a gang where his 
 quarry may be working and "rope" him into a con- 
 fession. 
 
 Detective agencies of the first-class are engaged 
 principally in clean-cut criminal work, such as guard- 
 ing banks from forgers and "yeggmen" — ^an original 
 and dangerous variety of burglar pecuhar to the 
 United States and Canada. In other words, they 
 have large associations for clients who need more pro- 
 tection than the regular poUce can give them, and 
 whose interest it is that the criminal shall not only 
 be driven out of town, but run down (wherever he 
 may be), captured, and put out of the way for as 
 long a time as possible. 
 
 The work done for private individuals is no less 
 important and effective, but it is secondary to the 
 other. The great value of the "agency" to the vic- 
 tim of a theft is the speed with which it can dissem- 
 inate its information — something quite impossible so 
 far as the individual citizen is concerned. Let me 
 give an illustration or two. 
 
 Between 10.30 p. M. Saturday, February 25, 1911, 
 and 9.30 a. m. Sunday, February 26, 1911, one hun- 
 dred and thirty thousand dollars worth of pearls be- 
 longing to Mrs. Maldwin Drummond were stolen 
 from a stateroom on the steamship Amerika of the 
 Hamburg-American line. The London underwriters 
 cabled five thousand dollars reward and retained to 
 
128 DETECTIVES WHO DETECT 
 
 investigate the case a well-known American agency, 
 which before the Amerika had reached Plymouth 
 on her return trip had their notifications in the 
 hands of all the jewelers and police officials of Europe 
 and the United States, and had covered every avenue 
 of disposal in North and South America. In addi- 
 tion, this agency investigated every human being 
 on the Amerika from first cabin to forecastle. 
 
 Within a year or so an aged stock-broker, named 
 Bancroft, was robbed on the street of one hundred 
 thousand dollars in securities. Inside of fifty-five 
 minutes after he had reported his loss a detective 
 agency had notified all banks, brokers, and the pohce 
 in fifty-six cities of the United States and Canada. 
 
 The telephone is the modem detective's chief ally, 
 and he relies upon rapidity more than upon deduc- 
 tion. Under present conditions it is easier to over- 
 take a crook than to reason out what he wiU probably 
 do. In fact, the old-fashioned " deductive detective " 
 is largely a man of the past. The most useless 
 operator ia the world is the one who is "wedded to 
 his own theory" of the case — the man who asks no 
 questions and rehes only on himseK. Interject a 
 new element into a case and such a man is all at sea. 
 In the meantime the criminal has made his "get 
 away." 
 
 In the story books your detective scans with eagle 
 eye the surface of the floor for microscopic evi- 
 dences of crime. His mind leaps from a cigar ash to 
 a piece of banana peel and thence to what the family 
 had for dinner. His brain is working all the time. 
 
DETECTIVES WHO DETECT 129 
 
 His gray matter dwarfs almost to insignificance that 
 of Daniel Webster or the Hon. Benjamin F. Butler. 
 It is, of course, aU quite wonderful and most ex- 
 cellent reading, and the old-style sleuth really 
 thought he could do it! Nowadays, while the fake 
 detective is snooping aroimd the back piazza with 
 a telescope, the real one is getting the "dope" from 
 the village blacksmith or barber (if there is any ex- 
 cept on Saturday nights) or the girl that slings the 
 pie at the station. These folk have something to go 
 on. They may not be highly intelligent, but they 
 know the coimtry, and, what is more important, they 
 know the people. All the brains in the world cannot 
 make up for the lack of an elementary knowledge of 
 the place and the characters themselves. It stands 
 to reason that no strange detective could form as 
 good an opinion as to which of the members of your 
 household would be most likely to steal a piece of 
 jewelry as you could yourself. Yet the old-fashioned 
 Sherlock knew and knows it all. 
 
 One of the best illustrations of the practical neces- 
 sity of some first-hand knowledge is that afforded 
 by the recovery of a diamond necklace belonging 
 to the wife of a gentleman in a Connecticut town. 
 The facts that are given here are absolutely accm-ate. 
 The gentleman in question was a retired business 
 man of some means who lived not far from the town 
 and who made frequent visits to New York City. 
 He had made his wife a present of a fifteen thousand- 
 dollar diamond necklace, which she kept in a box 
 in a locked trunk in her bedroom. While she had 
 
130 DETECTIVES WHO DETECT 
 
 ovmed the necklace for over a year she had never worn 
 it. One evening having guests for dinner on the 
 occasion of her wedding anniversary she decided to 
 put it on and wear it for the first time. That night 
 she replaced it in its box and enclosed this in another 
 box, which she locked and placed in her bureau 
 drawer. This she also locked. The following night 
 she decided to replace the necklace in the trunk. 
 She accordingly unlocked the bureau drawer, and also 
 the larger box, which apparently was in exactly the 
 same condition as when she had put it away. But 
 the inner box was empty and the necklace had abso- 
 lutely disappeared. Now, no one had seen the neck- 
 lace for a year, and then only her husband, their ser- 
 vants, and two or three old friends. No outsider 
 could have known of its existence. There was no 
 evidence of the house or bureau having been dis- 
 turbed. 
 
 A New York detective agency was at once retained, 
 which sent one of its best men to the scene of the 
 crime. He examined the servants, heard the story, 
 and reported that it must have been an inside job — 
 that there was no possibility of anything else. But 
 there was nothing to imphcate any one of the ser- 
 vants, and there seemed no hope of getting the neck- 
 lace back. Two or three days later the husband 
 turned up at the agency's office in New York, and 
 after beating about the bush for a while, remarked: 
 
 " I want to tell you something. You have got this 
 job wrong. There's one fact your man didn't under- 
 stand. The truth is that I'm a pretty easy going sort 
 
DETECTIVES WHO DETECT 131 
 
 of a feller, and every six months or so I take all the 
 men and girls employed around my house down to 
 Coney Island and give 'em a rip-roaring time. I 
 make 'em my friends, and I dance with the girls and 
 I joUy up the men, and we are all good pals together. 
 Sort of unconventional, maybe, but it pays. I know 
 — see? — that there ain't a single one of those people 
 who would do me a mean trick. Not one of 'em 
 but would lend me all the money he had. I don't 
 care what your operator says, the person who took 
 that necklace came from outside. You take that 
 from me. " 
 
 The superintendent, who is wise in his generation, 
 scratched his chin. 
 
 "Is that dead on the level?" he inquired. 
 
 "Gospel!" answered the other. 
 
 "I'll come up myself!" said the boss. 
 
 Next day the boss behind a broken-winded 
 horse, in a dilapidated buggy, drove from another 
 town to the place where his client Hved. At the 
 smithy on the cross-roads he stopped and borrowed 
 a match. The smith, glad of an excuse to leave the 
 heat of the forge, came out and got the loan of a chew 
 from the boss. 
 
 "Anybody have any good hosses in this town?" 
 asked the detective. 
 
 "Betcher Hfe!" answered the smith. "Mr. 
 
 up on the hill has the best in the county!" 
 
 "What sort of a feller is he?" 
 
 The smith chewed in silence for a moment. 
 
 " Don't know him myself, but I tell you what, his 
 
132 DETECTIVES WHO DETECT 
 
 help says he's the best employer they ever had — and 
 they stay there forever!" 
 
 The boss drove on to the house, which he observed 
 was situated at about an equal distance from three 
 different railway stations and sxuTovmded by a piazza 
 with pillars. He walked around it, examining the 
 vines until his eye caught a torn creeper and a white 
 scratch on the paint. It had been an outside job 
 after all, and two weeks had already been lost. De- 
 dudion was responsible for a mistake which would not 
 have occurred had a little knowledge been acquired 
 first. That is the lesson of this story. 
 
 The denouement, which has no lesson at all, is 
 interesting. The superintendent saw no prospect of 
 getting back the necklace, but before so informing 
 the client, decided to cogitate on the matter for a 
 day or two. During that time he met by accident 
 a friend who made a hobby of studying yeggmen 
 and criminals and occasionally doing a bit of the 
 amateur tramp act himself. 
 
 "By the way," said the friend, "do you ever hear 
 of any 'touches' up the river or along the Sound?" 
 
 "Sometimes," answered the boss, pricking up his 
 ears. "Why do you ask?" 
 
 "Why, the other night," repUed the friend, "I 
 happened to be meeting my wife up at the Grand 
 Central about six o'clock and I saw two yeggs that 
 I knew taking a train ovt. I thought it was sort of 
 funny. Pittsburgh Ike and Denver Red." 
 . "When was it?" 
 
 "Two weeks ago," said the friend. 
 
DETECTIVES WHO DETECT 133 
 
 "Thanks," returned the boss. "You must excuse 
 me now; I've got an important engagement." 
 
 Three hours later Pittsburgh Ike and Denver Red 
 were in a cell at head-quarters. At six o'clock that 
 evening the necklace had been returned. This was a 
 coincidence that might not occur in a himdred years, 
 but had the deductive detective determined the ques- 
 tion he would still be pondering on the comparative 
 probabHity of whether the cook, the chore man, or 
 the, hired girl was the giulty party. 
 
 A clean bit of detection on the part of an agency, 
 and quite in the day's work, was the comparatively 
 recent capture of a thief who secured three hundred 
 and sixty thousand dollars worth of securities from 
 a famous banking institution in New York City by 
 means of a very simple device. A firm of stock 
 brokers had borrowed from this bank about two 
 hundred and fifty thousand dollars for a day or two 
 and put up the securities as collateral. In the ordi- 
 nary course of business, when the borrower has no 
 further use for the money, he sends up a certified 
 check for the amount of the loan with interest, and 
 the baiik turns over the securities to the messenger. 
 In this particular case a messenger arrived with a 
 certified check, shoved it into the cage, and took away 
 what was pushed out to him in return — three hundred 
 and sixty thousand dollars in bonds. The certifica- 
 tion txuTied out to be a forgery and the securities 
 vanished. I do not know whether the pohce were 
 consulted or not. Sometimes in such cases the banks 
 prefer to resort to more private methods and, per- 
 
134 DETECTIVES WHO DETECT 
 
 haps, save the necessity of making a public admission 
 of their stupidity. When my friend, the superin- 
 tendent, was called in, the officers of the bank were 
 making the wildest sort of guesses as to the identity 
 of the master mind and hand which had deceived 
 the cashier. He must, they felt sure, have made the 
 forgery with a camel's hair brush of imrivalled fine- 
 ness. 
 
 "A great artist!" said the president. 
 
 "The most skilful forger in the world!" opined 
 another. 
 
 "We must run down all the celebrated criminals!" 
 annoimced a third. 
 
 "Great artist — ^nothing!" remarked the boss, 
 rubbing his thmnb over the certification which 
 blurred at the touch. "He's no painter! Why, that's 
 a rubber stamp!" i 
 
 What a shock for those dignified gentlemen! To 
 think that their cashier had been deceived by a mere, 
 plebeian, common or garden thing of rubber! 
 
 "Good-day, gents!" said the boss, putting the 
 check in his wallet. "I've got to get busy with the 
 rubber stamp makers!" 
 
 He retiimed to his office and detailed a dozen men 
 to work on the East Side and a dozen on the 
 West Side, with orders to search out every man in 
 New York who manufactured rubber stamps. Be- 
 fore the end of the afternoon the maker was found 
 on the Bowery, near Houston Street. This was his 
 story: A couple of weeks before, a young man had 
 come in and ordered a certification stamp, drawing 
 
DETECTIVES WHO DETECT 135 
 
 at the time a rough design of what he wanted. The 
 stamp, when first manufactured, had not been satis- 
 factory to him; and on his second visit, the customer 
 had left a piece of a check, carefully torn out in cir- 
 cular form, which showed the certification which he 
 desired copied. This fragment the maker had re- 
 tained, as well as a slip of paper, upon which the 
 customer had written the address of the place to 
 which he wished the stamp sent — ^The Young Men's 
 Christian Association! The face of the fragment 
 showed a part of the maker's signature. The super- 
 intendent ran his eye over a list of brokers and picked 
 out the name of the firm most like the hieroglyphics 
 on the check. Then he telephoned over and asked to 
 be permitted to see their pay roU. Carefully com- 
 paring the signature appearing thereon with the 
 Y. M. C. A. slip, he picked his man in less than ten 
 minutes. The latter was carefuUy trailed to his 
 home, and thence to the Young Men's Christian As- 
 sociation, after which he called on his fiancee at her 
 father's house. He spent the night at his own board- 
 ing place. Next morning (Sunday) he was arrested 
 on his way to church, and aU the securities (except 
 some that he later returned) were discovered in his 
 room. More quick work! The amateur's method 
 had been very simple. He knew that the loan had 
 been made and the bonds sent to the bank. So he 
 forged a check, certified it himself, and collected the 
 securities. Of course, he was a bungler and took a 
 hundred rash chances. 
 A good example of the value of the accumulated 
 
136 DETECTIVES WHO DETECT 
 
 information— documentary, pictorial, and otherwise— 
 in the possession of an agency was the capture of 
 Charles Wells, more generally known as Charles 
 Fisher, alias Henry Conrad, an old-time forger, who 
 suddenly resmned his activities after being released 
 from a six-year term in England. A New York City 
 bank had paid on a bogus two hundred and fifty dol- 
 lar check and had reported its loss to the agency in 
 question. The superintendent examined the check 
 and (although Fisher had been in confinement for six 
 years on the other side) spotted it for his work. The 
 next step was to find the forger. Of course, no man 
 who does the actual "scratching" attempts to "lay 
 down ' ' the paper. That task is up to the " presenter. ' ' 
 The cashier of the bank identified in the agency's 
 gallery the picture of the man who had brought in 
 the two hundred and fifty dollar check, and he in 
 turn proved to be another ex-convict well known in 
 the business, whose whereabouts in New York were 
 not difficult to ascertain. He was "located" and 
 "trailed" and all his associates noted and followed. 
 In due course he "connected up" (as they say) with 
 Fisher, Now, it is one thing to foUow a man who 
 has no idea that he is being followed and another to 
 trail a man who is as suspicious and elusive as a fox. 
 A professional criminal's daily business is to observe 
 whether or not he is being followed, and he rarely 
 if ever, makes a direct move. If he wants a drink at 
 the saloon across the street, he will, by preference, go 
 out the back door, walk around the block and dodge 
 in the side entrance via the tail of an ice wagon. In 
 
DETECTIVES WHO DETECT 137 
 
 this" case the detectives followed the presenter for 
 days before they reached Fisher, and when they did 
 they had still to locate his "plant." 
 
 The arrest in this case illustrates forcibly the chief 
 characteristic of successful criminals — egotism. The 
 essential quaUty of daring required in their pursuits 
 gives them an extraordinary degree of self-confidence, 
 boldness, and vanity. And to vanity most of them 
 can trace their fall. It seems incredible that Fisher 
 should have returned to the United States after his 
 discharge from prison and immediately resumed his 
 operations without carefully concealing his impedi- 
 menta. Yet when he was run down in a twenty-six 
 family apartment house, the detectives foimd in his 
 valise several thousand blank and model checks, hun- 
 dreds of letters and private papers, a work on "Mod- 
 ern Bank Methods," and his "ticket of leave" from 
 England! This man was a successful forger and be- 
 cause he was successful, his pride in himself was so 
 great that he attributed his conviction in England to 
 accident and really felt that he was immime on his 
 release. 
 
 The arrest of such a man often presents great legal 
 diflSculties which the detectives overcome by various 
 practical methods. There is no man in the world 
 who "gets away" with so many "tricks" on his 
 " chest " as the deuth. As they say, " It's the way we 
 do it." Of course, no officer without a search war- 
 rant has a right to enter a house or an apartment. A 
 man's house is his castle. Mayor Ga3mor, when a 
 judge, in a famous opinion (more famiharly known 
 
138 DETECTIVES WHO DETECT 
 
 in the lower world even than the Decalogue) laid 
 down the law unequivocally and emphatically in 
 this regard. Thus, in the Fisher case, the defendant 
 having been arrested on the street, the detectives de- 
 sired to search the apartment of the family with 
 which he hved. They did this by first inducing the 
 tenant to open the door and, after satisfying 
 themselves that they were in the right place, order- 
 ing the occupants to get in line and "march" from 
 one room to another while they rummaged for 
 evidence. "Of coxu^e, we had no right to do 
 it, but they didn't know we hadn't!" said the 
 boss. 
 
 But frequently the defendant knows his rights just 
 as well as the poHce. On one occasion the same de- 
 tective who arrested Fisher wanted to take another 
 man out of an apartment where he had been run to 
 earth. His mother (aged eighty-two years) put the 
 chain on the door and politely instructed the detec- 
 tive (who had no warrant) to go to purgatory. All 
 the evidence against the forger was inside the apart- 
 ment and he was actively engaged in burning it up 
 in the kitchen stove. In half an hour to arrest him 
 would have been useless! The detectives stormed 
 and threatened, but the old crone merely grinned at 
 them. She hated a "buU" as much as did her son. 
 Fearing to take the law into their own hands, they 
 summoned a detective sergeant from head-quarters, 
 but, although he sympathized with them, he had read 
 Mayor Gaynor's decision and declined to take any 
 chances. They then "appealed" to the cop on the 
 
DETECTIVES WHO DETECT 139 
 
 beat, who proved more reasonable, but although he 
 used all his force, he was unable to break down the 
 door which had in the meantime been reinforced 
 from the inside. After about an hour, the old lady 
 unchained the door and invited the detectives to 
 come in. The crook was sitting by the window smok- 
 ing a cigar and reading St. Nicholas, while all evidence 
 of his crime had vanished in smoke. 
 
 One more anecdote at the expense of the deduc- 
 tive detective. A watchman was murdered, the 
 safe of a brewery blown open and the contents 
 stolen. Local detectives worked on the case and 
 satisfied themselves that the night engineer at the 
 brewery had committed the crime. He was a quiet 
 and, apparently, a God-fearing man, but circum- 
 stances were conclusive against him. In fact, he 
 had been traced within ten minutes of the mur- 
 der on the way to the scene of the homicide. But 
 some little Hnk was lacking and the brewery officials 
 called in the agency. The first thing the superin- 
 tendent did was to look over the engineer. At first 
 sight he recognized him as a famous crook who had 
 served five years for a homicidal assault ! One would 
 think that that would have settled the matter. But 
 it didn't! The detective said nothing to his asso- 
 ciates or employers, but called on the engineer that 
 evening and had a quiet talk with him in which he 
 satisfied himseK that the man was entirely innocent. 
 The man had served his time, turned over a new leaf, 
 and was leading an honest, decent life. Two months 
 later the superintendent caused the arrest of four 
 
140 DETECTIVES WHO DETECT 
 
 yeggmen, all of whom were convicted and are now 
 serving fifteen years each for the crime. 
 
 Thus, the reader will observe that there are just 
 a few more real detectives still left in the business — 
 if you can find them. Incidentally, they, one and 
 all, take off their hats to Scotland Yard. They will 
 tell you that the Englishman may be slow (fancy an 
 American inspector of police wearing gray suede 
 gloves and brewing himself a dish of tea in his oflSce 
 at four o'clock!), but that once he goes after a crook 
 he is bound to get him — ^it is merely a question of 
 time. I may add that in the opinion of the heads of 
 the big agencies the percentage of ability in the New 
 York Detective Bureau is high — one of them going 
 so far as to claim that fifty per cent of the men have 
 real detective abiUty — that is to say "brains." That 
 is rather a higher average than one finds among 
 clergymen and lawyers, yet it may be so. 
 
THE CAMORRA 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 
 
 We are not Carabinieri, 
 We are not Royalists, 
 But we are Camorrists — 
 The devil take the others! 
 
 In Italy, when it rains, the man on the street mut- 
 ters: "Piove! Govemo ladro!" (It rains! Thief of 
 a government!") Oddly enough, this expression, 
 originally coined by the Fanfulla, an influential jour- 
 nal, to ridicTole the opponents of the government, 
 really epitomizes the attitude of the average Italian 
 toward the central authority. It is the vital word 
 spoken in jest. The Italian — and particularly the 
 Italian of the southern peninsula — ^is against govern- 
 ment — any government, aU government — on gen- 
 eral principles. He and his forefathers went through 
 a grim school, and they have not forgotten. 
 
 The Italian, however republican in form his insti- 
 tutions may be, is still the subject of a monarchy, 
 and he has never fuUy grasped the Anglo-Saxon idea 
 that even a king is subject to the law. In Italy no 
 one thinks of questioning the legaUty of an arrest. 
 With us, to do so is the first thought that comes. On 
 the Continent, the fact that an act is done by an 
 official, by a man in striped trousers, places it above 
 criticism. No matter how obvious an error may have 
 
 143 
 
144 THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 
 
 been committed, one is inevitably met by the placid 
 assertion: "The government makes no mistakes." 
 Neither has the idea of the sanctity of personal liberty 
 ever been properly developed. There is no habeas 
 corpus in Italy. Release on bail is legally possible, 
 but difficult of achievement and Uttle availed of. A 
 man's house is not "his castle." The law itself is 
 usually comphcated and slow in remedial and crim- 
 inal matters, and justice is apt to be blind unless the 
 right sort of eye doctor — a deputy or a senator — ^is 
 called in. Bureaucracy has perpetuated the Italian's 
 inherited distrust of government and distaste for 
 legal process, and drives him still to seek his ends 
 in many cases by influence, bribery, or — ^the Camorra. 
 
 Rarely can we point to a social phenomenon in 
 this country and say: "This is so because of some- 
 thing a hundred years ago." With us some one has 
 an idea, and presto! we are recalling judges, puUing 
 down idols, "elevating" women to be sheriffs, and 
 playing golf on Simdays. Where are the gods of yes- 
 terday? The pulse of the nation leaps at a single 
 click of the Morse code. An injustice in Oklahoma 
 brings a mass meeting together in Carnegie HaU. But 
 the continuance of the Camorra in Italy to-day is 
 directly due to the succession of tyrants who about 
 a century ago allowed the patriots of Naples and 
 Sicily to rot in prison or hung them up on scaffolds 
 in the public squares. 
 
 The Bourbon rule in the "Kingdom of the Two 
 Sicilies " * was one of the most despicable in history. 
 
 * Naples and Sicily were united under that name in 1734. 
 
THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 145 
 
 In eleven days in 1793 one hundred and twenty pro- 
 fessors, physicians, and priests were executed by the 
 pubUc hangman in Naples. This was a mere fore- 
 taste of what was coming. When Napoleon de- 
 throned the Bourbons in 1805 and made his brother 
 Joseph "King of Naples," there dawned an era of 
 enhghtenment and reform which continued when 
 Joseph was succeeded by Joachim Murat in 1808; 
 but the Congress of Vienna m 1815 reinstated the 
 old dynasty and recalled Ferdinand I, who had been 
 lurking in Sardinia, to the throne. Then the horrors 
 began again. A period of retrogression, of wholesale 
 persecutions and executions, followed. Never was 
 there anything like the nightmare of bloody politics 
 which lasted through the reigns of Ferdinand I (1825), 
 of Francis I (1830) , of Ferdinand II (1859), and of Fran- 
 cis II, until the entry of Garibaldi into Naples in 1860. 
 The oppressions of the Bourbons and the struggle 
 of the patriots of Italy for freedom and the Risorgi- 
 mento stimulated secret organization. No other 
 means to combat tyranny was, in fact, possible. To 
 be known to have hberal ideas meant instant arrest, 
 if not death. Under Ferdinand II there had been 
 over twenty thousand political prisoners actually in 
 prison at one time and thirty thousand more attend- 
 ibili, confined in their houses.* The governor of 
 Genoa complained to Mazziui's father because the 
 youth "walked by himself at night, absorbed in 
 thought." Said he: "We don't like young people 
 
 *G. M. Trevelyan, "Garibaldi and the Thousand," c. iii, p. 45. 
 De Cesares F. di P., p. has. 
 
146 THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 
 
 thinking without knowing the subject of their 
 thoughts." The great society of the Carbonari had 
 provoked the counter-organization of the Calderoni, 
 and had in turn given way to the "New Italy" of 
 Mazzini. It is said on excellent authority that in 
 1820 there were seventy thousand persons in the city 
 of Naples alone who belonged to secret societies. In 
 this year we first hear of the Camorra by name, and 
 for the next forty years it spread and flourished until 
 it became so powerful that the government of the 
 "Two Sicilies" had perforce to enter into treaty with 
 it and finally (in 1860) to turn over to it the policing 
 of the city of Naples. Indeed, it may be that some 
 such extra-legal organization was a practical neces- 
 sity if existence were to be tolerable at aU. 
 
 Lombroso, in the "Growth of Crime/' writes: 
 "When the royal postal ofiicials were in the habit of 
 tampering with correspondence, when the police were 
 bent on arresting the honest patriots and making use 
 of thieves as agents provocateurs, the necessity of 
 things enhanced the value of the Camorra, which 
 could always have a letter or a packet safely con- 
 veyed, save you from a dagger thrust in prison, 
 redeem you a stolen article for a fair sum, or, when 
 quarrels and disputes arose, could get these settled 
 on much more equitable terms and less costly than 
 any one else or indeed the ordinary process of the law." 
 
 This was the heyday of the Camorra as an organ- 
 ization of criminals. Later it developed into some- 
 thing more — a political ring imder whose leash the 
 back of southern Italy still quivers. 
 
THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 147 
 
 The Neapolitan Camorra had its origin in Spain. 
 The great Cervantes, in "Rinconeto y Contadillo," 
 has drawn a marvellous picture of a brotherhood of 
 thieves and malefactors who divided their evil profits 
 with the police and clergy. This was "La Gardima" 
 — ^the mother of the Camorra. As early as 1417 it 
 had rules, customs, and officers identical with those 
 of the Camorra of the nineteenth century, and, like 
 it, flourished in the jaUs, which were practically under 
 its control. Undoubtedly this organization found its 
 way into Sicily and Naples in the wake of the Span- 
 ish occupation of the thirteenth century, and ger- 
 minated in the loathsome prisons of the period imtil 
 it was ready to burst forth into open activity under 
 the Bourbons. 
 
 The word camorra comes from the Spanish chamarra 
 (in Italian gamurra, hence tdbarra, tabarrd), meaning 
 a "cloak" usually affected by thieves and buUies. 
 From this is derived the Spanish word camorra, "a 
 quarrel with fists," and the phrase hacer camorra, 
 fairly translatable as " to look for trouble." It would 
 be difficult to find any closer definition than this last 
 of the business of the Neapolitan Camorra. 
 
 Giuseppi Alongi, a pupil and follower of Lombroso, 
 and one of the principal Italian authorities upon the 
 subject, says concerning the rise of the Neapolitan 
 organization : 
 
 " The Camorra certainly had its birth in the prisons 
 of Naples. Old offenders regarded themselves as 
 aristocrats of crime, and behaved as masters in their 
 own households, forming a sort of privileged class 
 
148 THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 
 
 within the prison. The idea of levying taxes on new- 
 comers came as natural to them as that among soldiers 
 of calling upon the recruit to 'pay his footing.' That 
 the NeapoHtan Camorra is so mixed up with religion 
 is due to the fact that the local criminal unites ferocity 
 with reUgious superstition, while the amaziag devo- 
 tion of the population to 'Our Lady of Mount Car- 
 mel,' who is venerated as the symbol of maternal 
 love, offers an easy means of exploiting their credulity. 
 It became the custom, therefore, to exact tolls from 
 the people, imder the pretence that they were in- 
 tended for religious purposes. The Camorrists have 
 four huhdred feasts every year, and the Church 
 of Mount Carmel in Naples is still their religious 
 centre." 
 
 In the days from 1820 to 1860, to be a Camorrist 
 was a matter of pride and a rare distinction among 
 the baser sort. So far from conceaJiag his member- 
 ship in it, the Camorrista vaimted it abroad, even 
 affecting a peculiar costume which rendered him im- 
 mistakable. A red necktie, the loose ends of which 
 floated over either shoulder, a parti-colored sash, and 
 a cane heavily loaded with brass rings, marked him 
 as a "bad man" during this romantic period. But, 
 however picturesque it may have been, the Camorra 
 soon became the most dreaded and loathsome secret 
 society in the world. 
 
 Only those could become members who had shown 
 their preference for the mala vita and given tangible 
 evidence of their criminality. Candidates who had 
 qualified for the novitiate proved their suitability for 
 
THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 149 
 
 the next grade by performing some brutal act, such 
 as shtting an old man's throat from ear to ear. 
 
 The business of the Camorra was organized extor- 
 tion, assisted by murder and violence. The Camorrist 
 was a bully — one who could use the knife. In this he 
 was instructed imtil he became a master in artistic 
 stabbing with a fair knowledge of anatomy. Various 
 styles of knives were used for different purposes: the 
 settesoUi, for scarring and imimportant duelling 
 among members; the 'o zurrfpafuosso, or deadly offi- 
 cial knife, for the "jumping duel"; the triangolo for 
 murders, etc. The actual slashing was usually done 
 not by the Camorrist himself, but by some aspirant 
 to membership in the society who desired to give 
 proof of his virtue, and who, rather as a favor, was 
 permitted to take all the chances. Accordingly the 
 "honored" youth selected the right knife and lay in 
 wait for his victim, assisted by a palo, or "stall," 
 who gave warning of danger and perhaps arranged 
 for the victim to stimible just as the blow was to be 
 struck. Secret signals facilitated matters. Even to- 
 day, the American in Naples who is not "afraid to 
 go home in the dark" had best hasten his steps if he 
 hears near by the bark of a dog, the mew of a cat, 
 the crow of a cock, or a sneeze, any one of which does 
 not carry conviction as to its genuine character. 
 These are all common Camorrist signals of attack; 
 while popular tunes such as "Oi ne', traseteve, ca 
 chiora!" ("Go m,'^toT it rains!") are warnings of the 
 approach of danger. 
 
 The Camorra levied blackmail upon all gambling 
 
150 THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 
 
 enterprises, brothels, drivers of public vehicles, boat- 
 men, beggars, prostitutes, thieves, waiters, porters, 
 marketmen, fruit-sellers, small tradesmen, lottery 
 winners, and pawnbrokers, controlled aU the smug- 
 gling and coined bogus money; and the funds thus 
 secured were divided among (1) the police, (2) the 
 members in jail, (3) the aged, (4) widows and orphans 
 of those who had died in the cause of crime, (5) the 
 higher officers, (6) whatever saint or shrine it was 
 desired to propitiate, and (7) the "screenings" went 
 to the men who did the dirty work. 
 
 TheCamorrists made use of picture signs for names, 
 and a secret sjonbolism to express their meanings, 
 written or spoken. They also had an argot, or dialect, 
 which has impressed itseK upon the language of the 
 entire lower class of Naples. All criminals have a 
 jargon of their own, often picturesque, frequently hu- 
 morous, and the slang of the Camorrist differed little 
 from that of other associations of crooks here and 
 elsewhere, save in its greater volume. Much of the 
 Camorrist vocabulary has passed into common use, 
 and it is difficult to determine now what words are 
 of strictly Camorristic origin, although the following 
 are supposed to be so : 
 
 Freddare, "to turn a man cold" (to kill). 
 
 Agnello, "lamb" (victim). 
 
 II morto, "the dead one" (one robbed). 
 
 La Misericordia, "Compassion" (combination knife and 
 
 dagger). 
 Bocea, "mouth" (pistol). 
 Tric-trao (revolver). 
 Sord neri, "black rats" (night patrol). 
 
THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 151 
 
 Asparago* "asparagus" (a gendarme who has been tricked 
 
 —"a stiff"). 
 Si accolla, "he sticks to it" (he shoulders the others' crime). 
 
 In all there are said to be about five thousand 
 words in the Camorrist vocabulary ; but a large num- 
 ber of these are simply Neapolitan slang, for invent- 
 ing which eveiy Neapohtan has a gift. 
 
 No more interesting example of this slang has ever 
 come to light than in the secret diary of Tobia Basile 
 (nicknamed "Scarpia Leggia") who, after serving 
 thirty years in prison, returned to the haimts of 
 men to teach the picdotti the forms and ceremonies 
 of the society and to instruct them in its secret lan- 
 guage. This strange old man, more hterate than 
 most Camorrists, kept a diary in the ancient symbol- 
 ism of the brotherhood. Having become bored by 
 his wife he murdered her, walled her body up in the 
 kitchen, and recorded what he had done, thus: 
 
 May 1, "The violets are out." 
 
 May 7, "Water to the beans." 
 
 June 11, "I have pruned my garden." 
 
 Aug. 10, " How beautiful is the sun." 
 
 Sept. 12, "So many fine sheep are passing." 
 
 Time passed, and a contractor, rebtiilding the wall, 
 came upon the corpse. Tobia denied his guilt, but 
 his diary was f oimd, as well as a Camorrist translator. 
 "Water to the beans." That beautiful metaphor 
 was shown to mean naught else but "I have killed 
 and buried her!" And in the face of his own diary 
 
 ♦Compare the Florentine carcis/o "artichoke" for gendarme. 
 
152 THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 
 
 Tobia admitted the accuracy of his record. "Water 
 to the beans!" 
 
 The first grade of aspirants to the Camorra' was 
 that of the garzone di mala vita, or "apprentice," 
 who was practically a servant, errand-boy, or valet 
 for his masters or sponsors, and was known as a 
 giovine onorato, or honored youth. The second grade 
 was that of the picdott 'i sggaro, or novice, originally 
 difficult of attainment and often requiring from six 
 to ten years of service. The third or final stage was 
 that of the capo paranza, head of a local gang, or 
 "district leader." 
 
 The society was divided into twelve centres, cor- 
 responding to the twelve quarters of the city of 
 Naples, each centre being, in turn, subdivided into 
 paranze and having a separate or individual purse. 
 The chief of each paranza was elected, and was the 
 strongest or boldest man in the gang. In earlier days 
 he combined the office of president, which carried 
 with it only the hmited authority to call meetings, 
 with that of cashier, which involved the advantage 
 of being able to divide the camorra, or proceeds of 
 crime. The leader was entitled himself to the shruffo, 
 a percentage due by "right of camorra"; and this 
 percentage belongs to-day in every case to the Ca- 
 morrist who has planned or directed the particular 
 crime involved. The leaders of the twelve divisions 
 met, just as they occasionally do now, to discuss 
 affairs of vital importance, but in most matters the 
 individual sections were autonomous. 
 
 According to the confession of an old Camorrist, 
 
THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 153 
 
 the lowest grade of the society was attained by the 
 following rite: 
 
 A general meeting of the district was called, at 
 which the sponsor formally introduced the candidate 
 to the gathering. The leader stood in the midst of 
 his fellow Camorrists, all of whom where drawn up 
 in a circle according to seniority. If the treasurer 
 was present the president had three votes, and the 
 assembly was known in Camorrist slang as being cap' 
 in trino — three in one: if absent, the society was 
 known as cap' in testa, which means "the supreme 
 triad." All stood perfectly motionless, with arms 
 folded across their breasts and with bowed heads. 
 The president, addressing the neophyte, said: 
 
 "Knowest thou the conditions and what thou must 
 do to become an honored youth? Thou wilt endure 
 misfortune upon misfortune, thou wilt be obliged to 
 obey aU the orders of the novices and the solemn- 
 ly professed, and bring them useful gains to furnish 
 them with useful service." 
 
 To this the neophyte replies: 
 
 " Did I not wish to suffer adversities and hardships, 
 I should not have troubled the society." 
 
 After a favorable vote on the admission of the can- 
 didate, he was led forward and permitted to kiss each 
 member once upon the mouth. The president he 
 kissed twice. Certain favors were then asked of the 
 assembly by the neophyte, and the president made 
 reply: 
 
 "The favors asked shall be accorded according to 
 our rules. Our terms of membership are these: 
 
154 THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 
 
 "First: That thou go not singing or rowing or 
 brawling in the public streets. 
 
 "Secondly: That thou respect the novices and 
 whatsoever instructions they may give thee. 
 
 "Thirdly: That thou obey whole-heartedly our 
 professed members and carry out their commissions." 
 
 After a few tests of the candidate he was handed 
 over to the "novice master," a full-fledged mem- 
 ber under whom he was to serve his term of probation. 
 The period of his apprenticeship depended upon the 
 zeal, ability, and ready obedience which he displayed 
 in the course of it. He was absolutely at the mercy 
 of his master, and if so commanded he must substi- 
 tute himself for another and take the latter's crimes 
 upon his own shoulders; but one who thus made of 
 himself a "martyr" was promoted to a higher grade 
 in the society. 
 
 Promotion to such, higher grades involved stricter 
 examination and the Camorrist admonition: 
 
 "Shouldst thou see even thine own father stab a 
 companion or one of the brethren, thou art bound to 
 defend thy comrade at the cost of stabbing or wound- 
 ing thy father; and God help thee shouldst thou 
 traffic with traitors and spies!" 
 
 Standing with one foot in the galleys and the other 
 in the grave (symbolically), he swore to kill anybody, 
 even himself, should that be the wish of the society. 
 The kissing ceremony was then renewed, and the 
 candidate was initiated fully into the secrets of the 
 organization. The number of weapons in the posses- 
 sion of the Camorra was revealed to him, the names 
 
THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 155 
 
 of brethren under the ban of suspicion, the names of 
 all novices and postulants, as well as the society pass- 
 word and the code of recognition signs. 
 
 These points of ritual passed, the candidate was 
 then ready for the blood ceremony, which consisted 
 in tasting the blood of each member of the assembly, 
 drawn from a small knife-woimd made for the piu-- 
 pose, and finally the combat. For this necessary 
 part of the ceremony of initiation, the candidate was 
 required to select an opponent from the assembly. 
 The champions then chose their daggers, picked their 
 seconds, unshirted themselves — and the fight was on. 
 It was a rule that they must aim only at the muscles 
 of the arm, and the president, acting as capo di ti- 
 ranta (master of combat) was there to see that the 
 rule was obeyed. At the first drawing of blood the 
 combat was over, and the victor was brought for- 
 ward to suck the blood of the wound and embrace 
 his adversary. If the newly promoted member 
 happened to be the loser, he had to resume the 
 fight later on with another champion; and not until 
 he had won in a test was he definitely "passed" 
 and "raised." 
 
 Many other bloody tests have been attributed to 
 this ceremony of the Camorra; but these, as well as 
 the foregoing ia its strict form, have been largely 
 done away with, except in the prisons, where the so- 
 ciety still retains its formality. There remained, as 
 a final step in the ritual of initiation, the tattooing 
 of two hearts joined together with two keys. " Men 
 of honor ought to have heart enough for two people, 
 that is to say, have a large heart; men bound only 
 
156 THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 
 
 to their colleagues and whose heart is closed as it were 
 with a double key to aU others," Sometimes a spider 
 took the place of the hearts, symbolizing the industry 
 of the Camorrist and the silence with which he weaves 
 the web around his victim. This tattooing is still 
 customary among Camorrists. 
 
 The usual Camorrist tribunal consisted of a com- 
 mittee of three members belonging to the district or- 
 ganization, presided over by the Camorrist of highest 
 rank among them, and settled ordinary disputes and 
 punishments. From this there was an appeal in more 
 important matters to the central committee of twelve. 
 This latter body elected a supreme head for the entire 
 society, and passed on matters of general poHcy. It 
 also sat as a court of original and final jurisdiction 
 in cases of treachery to the society, such as betray- 
 ing its secrets or embezzling its fimds, imposed the 
 death penalty, and appointed the executioners. Its 
 decrees were carried out with blind obedience, al- 
 though not infrequently the death sentence was com- 
 muted to that of disfiguration. 
 
 Such, then, was the society which in 1820 already 
 controlled the prisons, dealt in assassination and rob- 
 bery, levied blackmail upon all classes, trafficked in 
 every sort of depravity, and had a rank and file upon 
 which its leaders could absolutely rely. It had no 
 political creed, nor did it interest itself in anything 
 except crime. It had greater solidarity than the po- 
 Hce, which was almost equally corrupt. Dreaded by 
 all, it was utilized by all, for it could do that which 
 the police could not do. 
 
 The city officials of Naples had a very tender re- 
 
THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 157 
 
 gard for the feelings of "the brethren of the dagger." 
 In 1829 certain reformers proposed building a wall 
 around a notoriously evil street, so that at night, 
 under lock and key, the inhabitants could be properly 
 "segregated." But the Camorra did not take kindly 
 to the suggestion, and a letter was left with the func- 
 tionary in charge of the matter: * 
 
 Naples, September, 1829. 
 Sm: 
 
 Are you not aware that in confining these poor girls 
 in walls you act as if they were condemned to the lowest 
 depths of hell? The prefect of police and the intendant who 
 ordered this brutal act have no heart. . . . We are here who 
 have much heart and are always ready to shed our own blood 
 for them, and to cut the throats of those who shall do anything 
 toward walling up that street. With all humility we kiss your 
 hands. N. N. 
 
 The street was not waUed up, the prefect of the 
 poKce discovering that he had too much heart. 
 
 Having no pohtics, the Camorrists became, as it 
 
 were, Hessians in pohtico-criminal activity. They 
 
 were loyal only to themselves, their favorite song 
 
 being: 
 
 "Nui rum simmo gravanari, 
 Nui non simmo realisti, 
 Ma nui simmo Camorristi, 
 Cuffiano a chilli' e a chistil" 
 
 (We are not Carabinieri, 
 We are not royalists, 
 But we are Camorrists — 
 The devil take the others!) 
 
 •H. D. Sedgwick, "Letters from Italy." 
 
158 THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 
 
 Under the Bourbons the poUce recognized and used 
 the Camorra as theu" secret agents and granted its 
 members immunity in return for information and as- 
 sistance. Both preyed on the honest citizen, and 
 existed by extortion and blackmail. "The govern- 
 ment and the Camorra hunted with one leash." Yet, 
 because the pohce were regarded as the instruments 
 of despotism, the people came to look upon the Ca- 
 morrists (who, technically at least, were hostile to 
 authority) as allies against tyranny. It was at this 
 period of Itahan history that the present distrust of 
 government and distaste for law had its rise, as well 
 as the popular sympathy for aU victims of legal proc- 
 ess and hatred for all who wear the uniform of the 
 pohce. The Camorra still appeals to the dread of 
 tyranny in the heart of the south Itahan to which in 
 large measure, by its compHcity, it contributed. Thus 
 the love of liberty was made an excuse for trafl&c with 
 criminals; thus was fostered the omerta, the per- 
 verted code of honor which makes it obligatory upon 
 a victim to shield his assassin from the law; and thus 
 was bom the loathing of all authority which stUl ob- 
 tains among the descendants of the victims of Ferdi- 
 nand's atrocious system, which, whatever their ori- 
 gin, gave the mala mto— ^brigandage, the Mafia, and 
 the Camorra — ^their virulence and tenacity. 
 
 In 1848 the Camorra had become so powerful that 
 Ferdinand II actually negotiated with it for support; 
 but the society demanded too much in return and 
 the plan fell through. On this account the Camprra 
 threatened to bring on a revolution! In this it was 
 
THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 159 
 
 not successful, but it now began openly to affect revo- 
 lutionary ideas and pretend to be the friend of liberty, 
 its imprisoned members posing as patriots, victims 
 of tyranny. 
 
 Thus it gained enormously in prestige and mem- 
 bership, while the throne became less and less secure. 
 Ferdinand II granted a general amnesty in order to 
 heighten his popularity, and the Camorrists who had 
 been in jaU now had to be reckoned with in addition 
 to those outside. In 1859 Ferdinand died and Fran- 
 cis II seated himself on the quaking throne. His pre- 
 fect of police, Liborio Romano, whom history has 
 accused of plotting the Bourbon overthrow with Gari- 
 baldi and of playing both ends against the middle, 
 had either perforce or with maUce prepense conceived 
 the scheme of harnessing the Camorra by turning 
 over to it the maintenance of order in the city. The 
 police had become demoralized and needed rejuve- 
 nating, he said. Francis II thereupon had another 
 jaU delivery, and "Don Liborio" organized a "Na- 
 tional Guard" and enlisted throngs of Camorrists in 
 it, whUe in the gendarmerie he recruited the picciotti 
 as rank and file and installed the regular Camorrists 
 as brigadiers. 
 
 Then came the news that Garibaldi was march- 
 ing upon Naples. Romano, still ostensibly acting 
 for the best interests of his royal master, urged the 
 latter's departure from the capital. The revolution 
 was coming. In some indefinable way, people who 
 were for the Bourbons yesterday saw to-day the im- 
 possibility of the continuance of the dynasty. The 
 
160 THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 
 
 cat was ready to jump, but it had not jumped yet. 
 Whatever may have been Romano's real motives so 
 far as the Bourbons were concerned, the fact remains 
 that his control over the national miUtia and pohce, 
 during the days and nights just prior to the depart- 
 ure of the King and the arrival of Garibaldi, resulted 
 in a vigilance on their part which protected prop- 
 erty and maintained an order otherwise impossible.* 
 Garibaldi at last arrived, with Romano's Camorrist 
 poUce on hand to cheer loudly for "Victor Emmanuel 
 and Italy United!" and to knock on the head or stick 
 a knife into the gizzard of any one who seemed luke- 
 warm in his reception of the conquering hero. The 
 cat jumped — assisted by the Camorra. The hberals 
 were in, and with them the Camorrists, as the saying 
 is, "with both feet." Thus, perhaps for the first time 
 in history, was a society of criminals recognized ofli- 
 cially by the government and intrusted with the task 
 of policing themselves. 
 
 From 1860 on the Camorra entered upon a new 
 phase, a sort of duplex existence, having on the one 
 hand its old criminal organization (otherwise known 
 as the Camorra bassa) and on the other a group of 
 poHticians or ring with wide-spread ramifications, 
 closely affihated with the society and dealing either 
 directly with it or through its more influential and 
 fashionable mernbers, much as a candidate for office 
 in New York might have secured the support of the 
 "Paul Kelly Gang" through the offices of the poli- 
 tician under whose patronage it existed. This " smart 
 
 *G. M. Trevelyan, "Garibaldi and the Thousand," c. i., p. 19. 
 
THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 161 
 
 set" and the ring connected with it was known as 
 the Camorra alta or Camorra elegante, and from the 
 advent of Garibaldi to the present time the strictly 
 criminal operations of the society have been secondary 
 in importance to its pohtical significance. Its mem- 
 bers became not merely crooks, but "protected" 
 crooks, since they gave oflBce to men who would look 
 after them in return, and the result was the alhance 
 of politics and crime in the political history of South- 
 em Italy during the last fifty years. 
 
 It is hardly hkely that foxy old " Don Liborio " an- 
 ticipated any such far-reaching resiilt of his extraor- 
 diaary manoeuvre with the Camorra. It was not 
 many weeks, however, before the Camorrists who 
 had been given pubhc ofl&ce and continued under 
 Garibaldi, began to show themselves in their true 
 colors, and to use every opportunity for blackmail and 
 private vengeance. They had been given charge of 
 the octroi, or taxes levied at the city gates, and these 
 decreased, under Salvatore di Crescenza, from forty 
 thousand to one thousand ducats per day. Another 
 Camorrist collector, Pasquale Menotte, had the ef- 
 frontery to turn in, on one occasion, the princely 
 sum of exactly four cents. It became absolutely 
 necessary to get rid of them at any cost, and to drive 
 them out of the police and army, which they now 
 permeated. MUd measures were found insuflScient, 
 and as early as 1862 a raid was conducted by the 
 government upon the organization — Sparenta, the 
 Minister of Pohce, arresting three himdred Camorrists 
 in one day. But he accomphshed little. From this 
 
162 THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 
 
 time on until 1900 the history of the Camorra is that 
 of a corrapt poHtical ring having a standing army of 
 crooks and rascals by means of which to carry out 
 its bargains. 
 
 During this period many serious attempts were 
 made to exterminate it, but practically to no pur- 
 pose. In 1863 another fruitless series of raids filled 
 the jails of Naples, and even of Florence and Turin, 
 with its members; but the society continued to 
 flourish — ^less openly. The resignation of Nicotera 
 as Prime Minister in 1876 was followed by a burst of 
 activity among the Camorrists, but in 1877 the gov- 
 ernment made a serious effort to put down the Mafia 
 in Sicily, while in 1880 the murder of Bonelli in a 
 foul dive of the Camorra in Naples resulted in the 
 prosecution of five Camorrists for his murder. The 
 trial, like that of 1911-12, took place, for reasons of 
 safety, at Viterbo. The witnesses testified freely 
 upon every subject save the Camorra, and could not 
 be induced to suggest that the assassiaation had been 
 the result of a conspiracy. "The word Camorra 
 seemed to bum their tongues." The jury were so 
 impressed by the obvious terror which the society 
 inspired in the Neapolitans that they found all the 
 five — ^Esposito, Romano, Tiniscalchi, Langella, and 
 Trombetta — guilty, and they were sentenced to 
 forced labor in the galleys. 
 
 Apparently there was a sort of renaissance of the 
 Camorra about 1880, at the death of Victor Em- 
 manuel II, and under the new administration of Hum- 
 bert it began to be increasingly active in poHtical 
 
THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 163 
 
 affairs. At this time the Camorra alta included law- 
 yers, magistrates, school-teachers, holders of high 
 office, and even cabinet ministers. The writer does 
 not mean that these men went through the rites of 
 initiation or served an apprenticeship with the knife, 
 but the whole villainous power of the Camorra was 
 at their backs, and they utilized it as they saw fit. 
 
 The "Ring," affiliated as it is with the leaders of 
 the society, is still the most dangerous manifesta- 
 tion of the Camorra. Historically, it is true, it was 
 known as the alta Camorra or Camorra elegante, but 
 in ordinary parlance these terms are generally used 
 to describe Camorrists more closely related to the 
 actual district organizations, yet of a superior social 
 order — men who perhaps have graduated from leader- 
 ship into the more aristocratic if equally shady pur- 
 lieus of crime. These handle the elections and de- 
 Hver the vote, own a gambling-house or two, or even 
 more disreputable establishments, select likely vic- 
 tims of society's offscourings for blackmail, and act 
 as go-betweens between the Ring and the organiza- 
 tion. They also furnish the influence when it is 
 needed to get Camorrists out of trouble, and mix 
 freely in the fast life of Naples and elsewhere. The 
 power of the Ring reached its climax in 1900. 
 
 In return for the services of the Camorra bassa in 
 electing its deputies to office, the government saw to 
 it that the criminal activities of the society were not 
 interfered with. Prefects who sought to do their 
 duty found themselves removed from office or trans- 
 ferred to other commimes, and the blight of the Ca- 
 
164 THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 
 
 morra fell upon Parliament, where it controlled a 
 number of deputies from the provinces of "Capi- 
 tanata"; all governmental interference with the Ca- 
 morra was blocked, and Italian poHtics weltered in 
 corruption. 
 
 Upon the assassination of King Humbert, in 1900, 
 the situation in Naples was as bad as that of New 
 York City in the days of the Tweed Ring. The ig- 
 norant NeapoHtans sympathized with the Camorrists 
 as against the police, and voted as they were directed. 
 Almost all the lower classes were aflShated in some in- 
 direct way with the society, much as they are in New 
 York City with Tammany to-day. The Ring abso- 
 lutely controlled all but three of the newspapers pub- 
 lished in the city. The lowest depths had been 
 reached in every department of mimicipal and pro- 
 vincial administration, and even the hospitals and 
 orphan asylmns had been plundered to such an ex- 
 tent that there was nothing left for the thieves to 
 get away with. 
 
 At this crisis the Socialist newspaper. La Propa- 
 ganda, courageously sprang to the attack of the com- 
 munal administration, in the persons of the Sjmdic 
 Summonte and the Deputy Casale, who, smarting 
 under the lash of its excoriation, brought an action 
 of libel against its editor. Heretofore similar attacks 
 had come to nothing, but the facts were so notorious 
 that Summonte evaded service and abandoned his 
 associate, and Casale, facing the necessity of explain- 
 ing how he could support a luxurious establishment 
 on no salary, endeavored to withdraw the action. 
 
THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 165 
 
 The Public Minister himseK announced that no wit- 
 nesses need be siunmoned for the defense, and pub- 
 Hcly expressed his indignation that a governmental 
 oflBcer, Commendatore F. S. Garguilo, Sustituto Pro- 
 curatore Generale of the Court of Cassation in Na- 
 ples, should have accepted a retainer for Casale. The 
 tribunal handed down a decision finding that the 
 facts asseverated by LaPropaganda were fuUy proved 
 and, referring to the influence of Casale, said: "The 
 immorality thence emanating is such as to nauseate 
 every honest conscience, and to affirm this in a ver- 
 dict is the commencement of regeneration." 
 
 This was, indeed, the commencement of a tem- 
 porary regeneration. Casale was forced to resign 
 his seat in ParUament and in the provincial coimcil. 
 The entire municipal council resigned, and, amid the 
 roarings of the Neapohtan Camorrist press, the presi- 
 dent of the Council of Ministers, Senator Saracco, 
 proposed and seciured a royal commission of inquiry 
 of plenipotentiary powers, with a royal commissioner 
 to administer the commune of Naples. The report 
 of this cornmission, in two volumes of nine hundred 
 pages each, draws a shocking pictiu-e of mimicipal 
 depravity, in which Casale appeared as recommending 
 criminals to pubhc office, selling places for cash, and 
 holding up payments to the city's creditors imtil he 
 had been "seen." He was proved to have received 
 thirty thousand lire for securing a subsidy for a steam- 
 ship company, and sixty thousand lire for getting a 
 franchise for a street railway. It appeared that the 
 corruption in the educational departments passed 
 
166 THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 
 
 description, that concessions were hawked about to 
 the highest bidder, and that in one deal — ^the "Scan- 
 dalous Loan Contract," so called— five hundred thou- 
 sand hre had been divided between ScarfogKo, Siun- 
 monte, Casale, and DeUeto. This Scarfogho, the 
 editor of II Matino, and the cleverest journalist in 
 Naples, was exposed as the Ring's intermediary, and 
 his wife, the celebrated novehst, Matilde Serao, was 
 demonstrated to have been a trafiicker in posts and 
 places. The trial and exposures created a furore all 
 over Italy. The Prime Minister refused to continue 
 the Royal Commission and announced a general elec- 
 tion, and, amid the greatest excitement, the Camorra 
 railed all its forces for its final struggle in pohtics. 
 But the citizens of Naples had had enough of the 
 Ring for the time being, and buried aU the society's 
 candidates imder an avalanche of votes. This was 
 the severest blow ever dealt to the political influence 
 of the Camorra. 
 
 The Casale trial marks the last stage of the Ca- 
 morra's history to date. America has had too many 
 "rings" of her own to care to delve deeply into the 
 slime of Itahan poHtics. The Camorra regularly de- 
 livers the votes of the organization to governmental 
 candidates, and exerts a powerful influence in the 
 Chamber of Deputies. It stiU flourishes in Naples, 
 and continues in a somewhat modified form its old 
 formalities and festivities; but its life is hidden and 
 it works in secret. The solidarity of the organization 
 has yielded to a growing independence on the part of 
 local leaders, whose authority is often usurped by 
 
THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 167 
 
 some successful basista (burglary planner). The big 
 coups become fewer as the years go on, the "stakes" 
 for which the criminal game is played smaller and 
 smaller. 
 
 Police Inspector Simonetti, who had many years' 
 experience in Naples, gave evidence before the Vi- 
 terbo Assize on June 8, 1911, as follows: 
 
 "The Camorra truly exists at Naples, and signi- 
 fies violence and absolutism. Formerly it had severe 
 laws and iron regiilations, and all the gains derived 
 from criminal undertakings were divided among all 
 the leaders. There was blind, absolute obedience to 
 the chiefs. In a word, the Camorra was a state 
 within a state. 
 
 "To-day this collectivism, this blind obedience, ex- 
 ists no longer. AH the Camorrists respect one another 
 but they act every man for himself. 
 
 "The Camorra exerts its energies in divers ways. 
 The first rung in the Camorrist ladder is the exploi- 
 tation of one or more women; the second, the horse- 
 fair sales and public auctions of pawned goods. The 
 Camorrists go to these latter with the special object 
 of frightening away all would-be non-Camorrist buy- 
 ers. Usury constitutes another special source'of lucre,, 
 and at Naples is exercised on a very large scale. The 
 Camorrist begins by lending a sum of five francs, at 
 one franc per week interest, in such fashion that the 
 gain grows a hundredfold, so that the Camorrist who 
 began with five-franc loans is able to lend enormous 
 sums to noblemen in need of funds. For instance, 
 the Camorrist loans ten thousand lire, but exacts a 
 
168 THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 
 
 receipt for twenty thousand lire, and gives goods in 
 place of money, these goods being subsequently 
 bought back at low prices by the selfsame usurers. 
 Another great industry of the NeapoHtan Camorra is 
 the receipt of stolen goods; practically all the re- 
 ceivers of such in Naples are members of the Ca- 
 morra." 
 
 Governor Abbate, who for thirty years past has 
 been chief warder of the prisons at Pozzuoh near Na- 
 ples (the ancient PuteoH at which St. Paxil sojourned 
 for seven days on his way to Rome), gave evidence 
 before the Viterbo Assize on June 13, 1911 : 
 
 "In the course of my thirty years' experience I 
 have had the worst sciun of the NeapoHtan Camorra 
 pass through my hands. I have never met a gentle- 
 man nor an individual capable of speaking the truth 
 among them. I have never been without a contin- 
 gent of Camorrists in my prison. I always follow the 
 system adopted in most other Italian prisons of put- 
 ting all the Camorrist prisoners together in a pack 
 by themselves. When new inmates come, they spon- 
 taneously declare if they be Camorrists, just as one 
 might state his nationality or his religion. I group 
 them accordingly with the rest of their fellows. They 
 know they will be so treated; and imless we follow 
 this system a perfect inferno, of terrorism ensues. 
 The Camorrists seize the victuals, the clothes and 
 imderwear of the non-Camorrist inmates, whom, in 
 fact, they despoil in every way imaginable. 
 
 " I come to learn the grades of my Camorrist prison- 
 ers inasmuch as Camorrists, probationers, freshmen, 
 
THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 169 
 
 and the rank and file, show studious obedience to their 
 seniors and chiefs, whom they salute with the title of 
 'master.'" 
 
 The Camorrist, in addition to exploiting women, 
 still levies toU on boatmen, waiters, cab-drivers, 
 fruit-sellers, and porters, and, under guise of protect- 
 ing the householder from the Camorrists, extorts each 
 week small sums from the ordinary citizen. The 
 meanest work of these "mean thieves" is the robbing 
 of emigrants about to embark, from whom they steal 
 clothing and money and even the pitiful little pack- 
 ages of food they have provided for the voyage. 
 
 A grade higher (or lower) are the gangs of biu-glars 
 or thieves whose work is directed and planned, and 
 the tools and means for which are furnished by a 
 padrone or basista. These will also do a job of stab- 
 bing and face-slashing at cut rates or for nothing to 
 obHge a real friend of the "Beautifully Reformed 
 Society." 
 
 More elevated in the social scale is the type of 
 Professor Rapi or Signor de Marinis, the Camorrista 
 elegante, who on the fringe of society watches his 
 chance to blackmail a society woman, "arrange" 
 various private sexual matters for some nobleman, 
 or cheat a drunken aristocrat at the gaming-tables. 
 
 Last, there is the traffic in the elections, which 
 has been so advantageous to the government in the 
 not distant past that its ostentatious attempts to 
 drive out the Camorra, made in response to pubhc 
 demand, have usually been haK-hearted, if not blar 
 tantly insincere. 
 
170 THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 
 
 Yet the traditions of the Camorra still obtain, and 
 in many of the prisons its influence is supreme. Wit- 
 ness the deadly duel between twelve Camorrists and 
 twelve Mafiusi in 1905 in the PozzuoH penitentiary, 
 in which five men were killed and the remainder had 
 to be torn apart at the muzzles of the infantry. Wit- 
 ness also, and more strikingly, the trial and execu- 
 tion of Lubrano, who, confined in jail with other Ca- 
 morristi, betrayed their secrets. In formal session 
 behind prison walls, the "brothers" sentenced him 
 to death, and he was stabbed by a picciotto, who was 
 thereupon "raised" to the highest grade of the 
 society. 
 
 The Camorrists still turn out in force for their re- 
 ligious hoMdays, and visit Monte Vergine and other 
 shrines in gala costume, accompanied by their women. 
 Drunken rioting, debauchery, and knifings mark the 
 devotions of this most religious sect. But they are a 
 shoddy lot compared to the "bravos" of the last 
 century. At best, they are a lot of cheap crooks — 
 "pikers" compared to a first-class cracksman- 
 pimps, sharpers, petty thieves, and dealers in de- 
 pravity, Hving off the proceeds of women and by the 
 blackmail of the ignorant and credulous. 
 
 It would be ridiculous to deny that the Camorra 
 exists in Naples, but it would be equally absurd to 
 claim that it has the picturesqueness or virility of 
 ancient times. Yet it is dreaded by all — ^by the Con- 
 tessa in her boudoir, by the manager of the great 
 trans-oceanic line, by the ragazzo on the street. The 
 inquiry of the traveller reveals little concerning it. 
 
THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 171 
 
 One will be confidently told that no such society or 
 sect any longer exists, and with equal certainty that 
 .it is an active organization of criminals in close alli- 
 ance with the government. Then, suddenly, some 
 trifling incident occurs and your eyes are opened to 
 the truth, at first hardly realized, that the crust of 
 modern civilization is, in the case of southern Italy, 
 superimposed upon conditions of life no more en- 
 lightened than they were a thousand years ago, and 
 that hatred and distrust of government, ignorance, 
 bigotry, and poverty make it a field fertile for any 
 sort of superstition or behef , be it in the potency of 
 the pulverized bones of young children for rheuma- 
 tism, the efficacy of a stuffed dove sHding down a 
 wire as a giver of fat harvest, or the deadly power of 
 the Camorra. And where several million people be- 
 lieve in and fear the Camorra, if for no other reason, 
 the Camorra or something akin to it is bound to exist. 
 
 Before long you will begin to find out things for 
 yourself. You may have your watch filched from 
 your waistcoat pocket, and you may perhaps get it 
 back through the agency of a shabby gentleman 
 — ^introduced by the hotel porter — ^who, in spite of 
 his rough exterior and threadbare clothing, proves 
 marvellously skilful in tracing the stolen property — 
 for a consideration. 
 
 You may observe that sometimes, when you take 
 a cab, a mysterious stranger will spring up beside the 
 driver and accompany you to your destination. This 
 is the "collector" for the Camorra — ^the parasite that 
 feeds on every petty trade and occupation in the city. 
 
172 THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 
 
 For the boatman shares his hire with a man who loit- 
 ers on the dock; the porter gives up a soldo or two 
 on every job; and the beggar divides with the Car 
 morra the profit from la misericordia* Last of all, 
 you may stumble into one of the quarters of Naples 
 where the keeping of order is practically intrusted 
 to the Camorra; where the poUce do not go, save in 
 squads; and where each householder or dive-keeper 
 pays a weekly tax to the society for its supposed 
 "protection," part of which goes higher up — ^to some 
 "delegato" or "commissary" of the "P. S." f 
 
 Or you may enter into the Church of Santa Maria 
 del Carmine and find a throng of OAnl-faced men and 
 women worshipping at the shrines and calling for the 
 benediction of the Holy Trinity upon their criminal 
 enterprises. It is said that sometimes they hang 
 votive offerings of knives and daggers upon the altars, 
 and religiously give Heaven its share out of the pro- 
 ceeds of their crimes, much as some of our own kings 
 of finance and merchant princes, after a lifetime of 
 fraud and violation of law, will seek to salve their 
 consciences and buy an entrance to Paradise by 
 founding a surgical hospital or endowing a chair of 
 moral philosophy. But until, by chance, you meet 
 a Camorrist funeral, you wUl have no conception of 
 the real horror of the Camorra, with its procession 
 of human parasites with their blinking eyes, their 
 shufiling gait, their artificial sores and deformities, 
 all crawling from their holes to shamble in the trail 
 
 * Compassion. 
 
 t Piiblica Secureiza, or Public Safety — the regular police. 
 
THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 173 
 
 of the hearse that carries a famous basista, a capo 
 paranze, or a capo in testa to his grave. 
 
 It is undoubtedly a fact that ease of Uving, which 
 generates indolence, induces moral laxity, and a so- 
 ciety composed in part of a hundred thousand home- 
 less people, so poor that a few soldi represent a feast 
 or a festival, who sleep in alleys, on the wharves, in 
 the shrubbery of parks, or wherever night finds them, 
 is a fertile recruiting groimd for criminals. The pov- 
 erty of the scxun of Naples passes conception. Air 
 and sky, climate and temperature, combine to induce 
 a vagabondage which inevitably is hostile to author- 
 ity. The strong bully the weak; the man t3a"an- 
 nizes the woman; the padrone easily finds a ragged 
 crew eager to do his bidding for a plate of macaroni 
 and a flask of imspeakable wine ; a well-dressed scoun- 
 drel becomes a demi-god by simple virtue of his clothes 
 and paste-diamond scarf-pin; the thief that success- 
 fully evades the law is a hero; and the crook who 
 stands in with the police is a politician and a diplo- 
 mat. The existence of the Camorra in its broad sense 
 tirnis, not on the vigor of the government or the hon- 
 esty of the local functionaries, so much as on the con- 
 ditions of the society in which it is to be foimd. 
 
 Such is a glimpse of the Camorra, past and pres- 
 ent, which, with its secret relations to the poHce, its 
 terrors for the superstitious and timid, its attrac- 
 tion for the weak and evil-minded, its value to the 
 politicians, its appeal to the natural hatred of the 
 southern ItaHan for law and government, wiU con- 
 tinue so long as social conditions in Naples remain 
 
174 THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 
 
 the same — until refonn displaces indiflference and in- 
 capacity, and education* and religion effectively 
 unite to lift the NeapoUtans out of the stew of their 
 own grease. This is the sociological key to the Car 
 morra, for camorra means nothing but moral de- 
 linquency, and moral delinquency is always the 
 companion of ignorance, superstition, and poverty. 
 These last are the three bad angels of southern Italy. 
 
 For the reasons previously stated it is not surpris- 
 ing that the disclosures of 1900 had little or no per- 
 manent effect upon the criminal activities of the Ca- 
 morra. The Ring and the pohticians had, it is 
 true, received a severe shock, but the minor crimi- 
 nals had not been affected and their hold on the pop- 
 ulation remained as strong as ever. Soon the Ca- 
 morrists became as active at the elections, and the 
 authorities as complacent, as before, and after a 
 spasmodic pretence at virtue the "Public Safety" 
 relapsed into its old relations to the organization.! 
 
 The leaders of the new "Beautifully Reformed 
 Society" were reported to be Giovanni Rapi, a suave 
 and well-educated gambler, the Cashier of the or- 
 ganization and its chief adviser, sumamed "The Pro- 
 fessor" for having once taught modem languages in 
 the pubHc schools, at one and the same time a mem- 
 ber of both the high and the low Camorra, and an 
 international blackleg; Enrico Alfano, popularly 
 known as "Ericone," the reorganizer of the society 
 
 * The Italian Parliament approved in June last a bill proposed 
 by the government authorizing the establishment of 6,000 schools, 
 mainly in the Boutbem provinces, at a cost of 250,000,000 lire 
 ($50,000,000.) t See appendix. 
 
THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 175 
 
 and its "Supreme Head," the boss of all the gangs, 
 a fearless manipulator of elections, a Camorrist of 
 the new order — of the revolver instead of the knife, 
 the confidant of his godfather, Don Giro Vittozzi, — 
 the third of the criminal triumvirate, the most me- 
 diaeval of all these mediaeval figures, and the Machiai,- 
 velli of Naples. 
 
 Known as the "Guardian Angel" or "Gonfessor" 
 of the Camorra, this priest was chaplain of the Na- 
 ples Gemetery, and as such was accused of unsavory- 
 dealings of a ghoulish nature,* but he exerted wide 
 power and influence, had the ear of the nobility and 
 the entree to their palaces, and even claims to have 
 been the_confessor of the late King. Once, a cabby, 
 not recognizing Vittozzi, overcharged him. The ec- 
 clesiastic protested, but the man was insistent. At 
 length the priest paid the fare, saying, "Remember 
 that you have cheated Don Giro Vittozzi." That 
 night the cabman was set upon and beaten almost 
 beyond recognition. Next day he came crawling to 
 the priest and craved permission to drive him for 
 nothing. Many such stories are told of Vittozzi. 
 
 Besides these leaders, there were a score of lesser 
 lights — de Marinis, the "swell" of the Gamorra, a 
 mixer in the "smart set," fond of horses and of dia- 
 monds, a go-between for the poUticians; Luigi Arena, 
 the scientific head of the corps of burglars; Luigi 
 Fucci, the " dummy " head of the Gamorra ; and Gen- 
 naro Guocolo, a shrewd "basista" and planner of 
 burglarious campaigns, a little boss, grown arrogant 
 
 * In stolen burial shrouds and the bones of children. 
 
176 THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 
 
 from felonious success. The cast, indeed, is too long 
 for recapitulation. 
 
 These met and planned the tricks that were to be 
 turned, assigned each "picciotto" to his duty, re- 
 ceived and apportioned the proceeds, giving a du^ 
 share to the police, and perhaps betraying a comrade 
 or two for good measure — a crowd of dirty rascals, 
 at whose activities the authorities connived more or 
 less openly imtil the dual murder^that forced the 
 Italian government to recognize the gravity of the 
 conditions existing in the criminal world of Naples. 
 
 Then, in the twilight of the early morning of June 
 6, 1906, two cartmen foimd the body of Cuocolo, the 
 "basista," covered with stab-wounds by a roadside 
 on the slope of Vesuvius. At almost the same mo- 
 ment in the Via Nardones, in Naples, in a house di- 
 rectly opposite the Commissariat of Public Safety, 
 the poHce discovered his wife, Maria CutineUi Cuo- 
 colo, stabbed to death in her bed. Both were well- 
 known Camorrists, and the crime bore every indicar 
 tion of being a "vendetta." The first inquiries and 
 formahties were conducted quite correctly. The 
 police arrived on the spot and reported. The mag- 
 istrate came more deUberately, but in due course. 
 The two places where the crimes had occurred were 
 duly examined, the two autopsies made, and a few 
 witnesses heard. So far, everything had gone on just 
 as it might have in New York or Boston. 
 
 But then the Camorra got busy and things began 
 to go differently. Meantime, however, the poUce had 
 received an anonymous letter, in which the writer 
 
THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 177 
 
 alleged that upon the night of the murder (July 5) 
 a certain dinner party had taken place at an inn 
 known as "Mimi a Mare" at Cupra Calastro in the 
 commune of Torre del Greco, within a hundred yards 
 of the scene of the homicide, at which the guests pres- 
 ent were Enrico Alfano, Giro Alfano, his brother, Gen- 
 naro Ibello, Giovanni Rapi, and another. While they 
 were drinking wine and singing, a man suddenly en- 
 tered — Mariano de Gennaro — and made a sign to 
 Alfano, who pledged the visitor in a glass of "Mar- 
 sala" and cried, "All is well. We will meet to- 
 morrow." This the poUce easily verified, and the 
 diners were thereupon all arrested and charged with 
 being accompUces in the murder, simply because it 
 appeared that they had been near by. There was no 
 other evidence. Perhaps the wise poUce thought that 
 if arrested these criminals would confess. At any 
 rate, the merry-makers were aU locked up and Magis- 
 trate Romano of Naples began an investigation. At 
 this juncture of the drama entered Don Giro Vit- 
 tozzi, girded in his priestly robes, a "Holy Man," in 
 the odor of sanctity. 
 
 He hastened, not to the magistrate having the case 
 in charge, but to another, and induced him to begin 
 an independent investigation. He swore by his 
 priestly office that his godson. Giro Alfano, was in- 
 nocent as well as the others. He whispered the 
 names of the real murders — ^two ex-convicts, Tom- 
 maso De AngeUs and Gaetano Amodeo — and told 
 where the evidence of their guUt could be obtained. 
 He produced a witness, Giacomo Ascrittore, who had 
 
178 THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 
 
 overheard them confessing their guilt and the motive 
 for the murder— revenge because Cuocolo had 
 cheated them out of the proceeds of still another 
 homicide. A poHce spy, Antonio Parlati, and De- 
 lagato Ippolito, a Commissary of police, gave their 
 active assistance to the crafty priest. The prisoners 
 were released, while in their stead De Angelis and 
 Amodeo were thrown into jaU. 
 
 Then the storm broke. The decent men of Naples, 
 the Socialists, the honest pubHc of Italy, with one 
 voice, demanded that an end should be put to these 
 things — and the Camorra. The cry, taken up by the 
 unbought press, swept from the Gulf of Genoa to the 
 Adriatic and to the Straits of Messina. The ears of 
 the bureaucracy burned. Even GioUtti, the prime 
 minister, Ustened. The government put its ear to the 
 groimd and heard the rumble of a poHtical earth- 
 quake. They are shrewd, these Itahan politicians. 
 Instantly a bulletin was issued that the government 
 had determined to exterminate the Camorra once and 
 for all time. The honest and eager King found sup- 
 port ready to his hand and sent for the General com- 
 manding the Carabinieri and intrusted the matter to 
 him personally. The General at once ordered Cap- 
 tain Carlo Fabbroni to go to Naples and see what 
 could be done. Fabbroni went, stmmioning first Er- 
 minio Capezzuti and Giuseppi Farris, non-commis- 
 sioned officers of the rank of MaresciaUo,* sleuths of 
 no mean order. In two months Capezzuti had en- 
 snared Gennaro Abattemaggio, a petty thief and 
 
 * About equivalent to our "quartennaster-sergeant." 
 
THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 179 
 
 blackmailer and an insignificant member of the Ca- 
 morra, and induced him to tmn informer against the 
 society, and the house of Ascrittore was searched and 
 a draft of what it was planned that he should testify 
 to upon the charges against De Angelis and Amodeo 
 was discovered written in the hand of Ippolito, the Dele- 
 gato of Police! Thereupon the spy, Parlati, and 
 Ascrittore were both arrested and thrown into prison 
 on the charge of caltunny. Vittozzi, the priest, was 
 arrested for blackmail, and his residence was rum- 
 maged, with the result that quantities of obscene 
 photographs and pictm-es were discovered among the 
 holy man's effects! Abattemaggio made a fxill con- 
 fession and testified that the five diners at "Mimi a 
 Mare" — the first arrested — had planned the murders 
 and were awaiting at the inn to hear the good news 
 of their accomplishment. 
 
 According to his testimony, Cuocolo and his wife 
 had been doomed to death by the central Council of 
 the Camorra for treachery to the society and its de- 
 crees. Cuocolo, ostensibly a dealer in antiquities, 
 was known to have for many years planned and or- 
 ganized the more important burglaries executed by 
 his inferiors. Owing to his acquaintance with many 
 wealthy persons and aristocrats he was able to fur- 
 nish plans of their homes and the information neces- 
 sary successfully to carry out his criminal schemes. 
 In course of time he married Marie Cutinelli, a woman 
 of doubtful reputation, known as "La Bella Sorren- 
 tina." She, for her part, purchased immunity for 
 Cuocolo by her relations with certain poUce officials, 
 
180 THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 
 
 and her house became the scene of Camorrist de- 
 bauchery. Thus, gradually, Cuocolo in turn aflffiated 
 himself with the police as a spy, and, to secure himself, 
 occasionally betrayed an inferior member of the soci- 
 ety. He also grew arrogant, defied the mandates of 
 the heads of the society and cheated his fellows out of 
 their share of the booty. For these and various other 
 offences he was doomed to death by the Camorrist 
 tribunal of high justice, at a meeting held upon May 
 26, 1906, and presided over by Enrico Alfano. He 
 and his wife— who otherwise would have betrayed the 
 assassins to the police — ^were thereupon stabbed to 
 death, as related above, on the night of Jxme 5, 1906, 
 by divers members of the Camorra. The adventures 
 of Capezzuti, who, to accompUsh his ends, became 
 a companion of the canaille of Naples, form a thrill- 
 ing narrative. For our present purposes it is enough 
 to say that in due course he formed the acquaintance 
 of Abattemaggio, visited him in prison, and secured 
 from him a list of the Camorrists and full informa- 
 tion relative to the inner oflBcers and workings of the 
 organization. 
 
 Meanwhile Enrico Alfano having been released 
 from custody had for a while Uved in Naples in his 
 usual haxmts, but, on learning that the Carabinieri 
 had been ordered to take a hand in investigating the 
 situation, he had gone first into hiding at Afragola, 
 a viUage near Naples, and had afterward fled to 
 New York, where he had been arrested later in the 
 year by Detective Petrosino and sent back to Havre, 
 while ItaHan police ofl&cers were on their way to 
 
THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 181 
 
 America to take him back to Naples. Luckily, the 
 French government was notified in time, so that he 
 was turned over to the Italian government instead 
 of being set at liberty, and was delivered to the Car- 
 abinieri ia June, 1907, at Bardonacchia, on the 
 frontier, together with fourteen other criminals who 
 were being expelled from French territory. Then 
 Capezzuti, armed with the confession of Abatte- 
 maggio, made a clean sweep of all the Camorrists 
 against whom any evidence could be obtained and 
 conducted wholesale raids upon their homes and 
 hiding places, with the result that Rapi and the 
 others were all arrested over again. 
 
 During the next four years the Carabinieri found 
 themselves blocked at every turn owing to the machi- 
 nations of the Camorra. Abattemaggio made several 
 independent confessions, and many false and fruit- 
 less leads had to be run down. The police ("Pubhc 
 Safety") were secretly hostile to the Carabinieri 
 and hindered instead of helped them. Indeed, they 
 assisted actively in the de:tence of the Camorra. Im- 
 portant documents were purloined. Evidence dis- 
 appeared. Divers magistrates carried on separate in- 
 vestigations, kept the evidence to themselves, and 
 connived at the misconduct of the police. The Dela- 
 gato Ippolito and his officers were tried upon the de- 
 nunciation of Captain Fabbroni, and were all ac- 
 quitted, for the Carabinieri were not called as wit- 
 nesses, and the public prosecutor who had asked for 
 a three-year jail sentence did not even appeal the 
 case! Each side charged the other with incompe- 
 tence and corruption and — ^nothing happened. 
 
182 THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 
 
 The defendants, numbering thirty-six in all, were 
 finally brought to trial at the Assize Court atViterbo, 
 forty mUes from Rome, in the spring of 1911, and at 
 the present time* the proceedings are still going on. 
 The case is, in fact, one of the most sensational on 
 record and the newspapers of the civiUzed world have 
 vied with one another in keeping it in the public eye 
 during the year or more that has elapsed since the 
 jury were empannelled, but there is no direct evi- 
 dence as to the perpetrators of the homicides, and, 
 unfortunately, imless the jury find that some of the 
 Camorristi in the cage actually planned and exe- 
 cuted the murder of the Cuocolos, the consequences 
 to the defendants will not be serious, as mere "asso- 
 ciation for delinquency" with which most of them 
 are charged is punishable with a shorter term of im- 
 prisonment than that which will have been suffered 
 by the accused before the conclusion of their trial. 
 Under Article 40 of the Italian Penal Code, the de- 
 fendants get credit for this period, so that in most 
 instances a verdict of guilty at Viterbo would be fol- 
 lowed by the immediate discharge of the prisoners.! 
 This is the case with Rapi — although the evidence 
 has brought out a new offence for which he may still 
 be prosecuted. And, as blackmail, for which that 
 astounding rascal, Don Ciro Vittozzi, is being tried, 
 is punishable with but three to five years imprison- 
 ment, "that Holy Man," as he is termed by Alfano, 
 will probably never be compelled to retire to a gov- 
 ernmental cloister. 
 
 *May, 1912. 
 
 t Ten or more have been liberated already on this ground. 
 
THE CAMORRA IN ITALY 183 
 
 But whatever the result of the trial, it is quite un- 
 likely that the prosecution will have any lasting effect 
 upon the Camorra, for while this cage fuU of petty 
 criminals has engaged and is engaging the entire re- 
 sources of the Itahan government a thousand or so 
 others have come into being, and an equal number 
 have grown to manhood and as picciotti have filled the 
 places temporarily left vacant by their incarcerated 
 superiors. Nay, it is even probable that the public 
 exploitation of the activities of the society will give 
 it a new standing and an increased fascination for 
 the imemployed youth of Naples,- 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 AN AMERICAN LAWYER AT VITERBO 
 
 It is not unnatural that a young, enthusiastic, and 
 self-confident people should regard with condescen- 
 sion, if not contempt, the institutions of foreign, if 
 older, societies. Americans very generally suffer 
 from the illusion that liberty was not discovered prior 
 to 1776, and that their country enjoys a monopoly 
 of it. Even experienced and conservative editorial 
 writers sometimes unconsciously fall victims to the 
 provincial trait of decrying methods, procedures, and 
 systems simply because they are not our own. With- 
 out, the writer believes, a single exception, the news- 
 papers of the United States have indulged in torrents 
 of bitter criticism at the manner in which the trial of 
 the Camorra prisoners at Viterbo is being conducted, 
 and have commonly compared the court itself to a 
 "bear garden," a "circus," or a "cage of monkeys." 
 Wherever the matter has been the subject of discus- 
 sion or comment, the tone has been always the same, 
 with the implied, if unexpressed, suggestion that if 
 the prosecution were being conducted here the world 
 would see how quickly and effectively we would dis- 
 pose of the case — and this with the memory of the 
 Thaw and Patterson trials fresh in our minds. The 
 following editorial from the New York Times, printed 
 in March of this year, is by no means extreme as com- 
 
 184 
 
AN AMERICAN AT VITERBO 185 
 
 pared with the views expressed in other newspapers, 
 and seems to indicate the popular impression of the 
 manner in which this trial is being carried on: 
 
 Our own methods of criminal procedure have long been the 
 object of severe and just criticism, and in our exaggerated and 
 insincere fear of convicting the innocent we have made the 
 conviction of the guilty always difficult and often impossible. 
 Quite unknown in our criminal courts, however, and fortu- 
 nately, are such strange scenes as are presented daily at the 
 trial of the Camorrists now going on in Italy. 
 
 There the law is so little confident of its own powers that 
 the accused are herded together in one steel cage, apparently 
 with the idea of preventing attempts at rescue by a public 
 largely sympathetic with organized robbery and assassination, 
 while the witness for the prosecution is secluded in another 
 cage, lest he be torn to pieces by the prisoners or their friends. 
 The pleadings on each side seem to consist largely of denun- 
 ciations and threats aimed at the other, tears of rage alter- 
 nate with shrieks of the same origin, and order is only occa- 
 sionally restored, when the din rises too high, by the curiously 
 gentle expedient of suspending the session of the court. 
 
 How justice is to be the outcome of proceedings such as 
 these, and thus conducted, may be comprehensible to what is 
 called — with little reason — the Latin mind, but others are 
 lost in amazement. It is all highly interesting, no doubt, but 
 one is no more likely to regret that we do not carry on our 
 trials in this way than he is to be sorry that our criminals 
 are not such important and powerful persons as the members 
 of the Camorra seem to be. 
 
 Only one fact stands out clearly at Viterbo — the fact that 
 the attack on the banded brigands has been so long delayed 
 that the authority of the law can not now be vindicated with- 
 out producing a sort of civil war. Which ought to be humili- 
 ating for somebody. 
 
 Only one conclusion could have been reached by 
 the half milhon readers of this particular editorial, 
 
186 AN AMERICAN AT VITERBO 
 
 and that — the immense superiority of our own legal 
 procedure and method of handling crimiQal business 
 over those of Italy. 
 
 Yet (to examine the statements in this editorial 
 seriatim) it is not true that scenes similar to those 
 enacted at Viterbo are unknown in our criminal 
 courts; that the lack of confidence of the authorities 
 in their own power is the cause of the prisoners being 
 confined in court in a steel cage; that the pubUc is 
 "largely sympathetic with organized robbery and as- 
 sassination"; and that tears and shrieks of rage al- 
 ternate to create a pandemonium which can be stilled 
 only by adjourning court; and, while there is enough 
 justification in fact to give color to such an editorial, 
 the only extenuation for its exaggeration and the 
 false impression it creates Hes in the charitable view 
 that the writer had an equally blind confidence in 
 the sincerity of his resident Italian correspondent and 
 in the latter's cabled accounts of what was going on. 
 
 Unfortunately, the reporters at Viterbo have sent 
 in only tlie most sensational accounts of the proceed- 
 ings, since, unless their "stuff" is good copy, the ex- 
 pense of collecting and cabling European news de- 
 prives it of a market. The press men at Viterbo 
 have given the American editors just what they 
 wanted. Such opportunities occur only once or 
 twice in a lifetime, and they have fully availed them- 
 selves of it. 
 
 Then, to the false and exaggerated cable of the 
 correspondent the "write-up man" lends his imagi- 
 nation; significant and important facts are omitted 
 
AN AMERICAN AT VITERBO 187 
 
 altogether, and the pubHc is led to believe that an 
 ItaUan criminal trial consists of a yelling bandit in a 
 straitjacket, with a hysterical judge and frenzied 
 lawyer abusing each other's character and ancestry. 
 
 Let the writer state, at the outset, that he has never 
 in his legal experience seen a judge presiding with 
 greater courtesy, patience, fairness, or ability, or 
 keeping, as a general rule, under all the circumstances, 
 so perfect a control over his court, as the president 
 of the assize in which the prosecution of the Camorra 
 is being conducted; nor is he famUiar with any legal 
 procedure better fitted to ascertain the truth of the 
 charges being tried. 
 
 In studying the Camorra trial at Viterbo, or any 
 other ItaUan or French criminal proceeding, the 
 reader must bear in mind that there is a fundamental 
 distinction between them and our own, and that 
 there are two great and theoretically entirely dif- 
 ferent systems of criminal procedure, one of which is 
 the offspring of the Imperial Roman law and the other 
 entirely Anglo-Saxon. One is the Roman or inquisi- 
 torial system, and the other the Enghsh or contro- 
 versial. Under the former the officers of the state 
 are charged with the duty of ferreting out and pun- 
 ishing crime wherever found, and the means placed 
 at their disposal are those' likely to be most effective 
 for the purpose. The theory of the latter is that, to 
 some extent at least, a criminal trial is the result of 
 a dispute between two persons, one the accuser and 
 the other the accused, and that the proceeding savors 
 of a private law-suit. Now, it is obvious that, in 
 
188 AN AMERICAN AT VITERBO 
 
 principle at least, the two systems differ materially. 
 In the one, the only thing originally considered was 
 the best way to find out whether a criminal were 
 guilty and to lock him up, irrespective of whether 
 or not any private individual had brought an accu- 
 sation against him. In the other, somebody had to 
 make a complaint and "get his law" by going after 
 it himseK to a very considerable extent. 
 
 The history of the development of these diverse 
 theories of criminal procedure is too involved to be 
 discussed here at any length, but inasmuch as the 
 most natural way of ascertaining whether or not a 
 person has been guilty of a crime is to question him 
 about it, the leading featiire of the Continental sys- 
 tem is the "question," or inquisitorial nature of the 
 proceedings, whereby the police authorities, who are 
 burdened with the discovery and prosecution of 
 crime, initiate the whole matter and bring the defend- 
 ant and their witnesses before an examining magis- 
 trate in the first instance. The procureur (district 
 attorney) in France and the promratore del re in Italy 
 represent the government and are part of the magis- 
 tracy. They are actually quasi- judicial in their char- 
 acter, and their powers are infinitely greater than 
 those of our own prosecutors, who occupy a rather 
 anomalous position, akin in some ways to that of a 
 procureur, and at the same time, imder our contro- 
 versial practice, acting as partisan attorneys for the 
 people or the complainant. 
 
 The fundamental proposition under the inquisi- 
 torial system is that the proceeding is the govern- 
 
AN AMERICAN AT VITERBO 189 
 
 ment's hmness, to be conducted by its officers by 
 means of such investigations and interrogations as 
 will most likely get at the truth. Obviously, the 
 qmckest and surest means of determining the guilt 
 of a defendant is to put him through an exhaustive 
 examination as soon as possible after the crime, under 
 such surroundings that, while his rights will be safe- 
 guarded, the information at his disposal will be 
 eUcited for the benefit of the pubhc. The fact that 
 in the past the Spanish Inquisition made use of the 
 rack and wheel, or that to-day the "third degree" 
 is freely availed of by the American pohce, argues 
 nothing against the desirability of a public oral ex- 
 amination of a defendant in a criminal case. If he 
 be given, under our law, the right to testify, why 
 should he be 'privileged to remain silent? 
 
 The Anglo-Saxon procedure, growing up at a time 
 when death was the punishment for almost every 
 sort of offence, and when torture was freely used to 
 extort confessions of guilt, developed an extraor- 
 dinary tenderness for accused persons, which has 
 to-day been so refined and extended by legislation 
 in America that there is a strong feeling among law- 
 yers (including President Taft) that there is much 
 in our practice which has outlived its usefulness, and 
 that some elements of Latin procedure, including the 
 compulsory interrogation of defendants in criminal 
 cases, have a good deal to recommend them. 
 
 A French or Italian criminal trial, therefore, must 
 be approached with the full understanding that it 
 is a governmental investigation, free from many of 
 
190 AN AMERICAN AT VITERBO 
 
 the rules of evidence which Bentham said made the 
 English procedure "admirably adapted to the ex- 
 clusion of the truth." The judge is charged with the 
 duty of conducting the case. He does all the ques- 
 tioning. There is no such thing as cross-examina- 
 tion at all in our sense, that is to say, a partisan ex- 
 amination to show that the witness is a har. The 
 judge is there for the purpose of determining that 
 question so far as he can, and the jury are not com- 
 pelled to Hsten to days of monotonous interrogation 
 during which the witness is obKged to repeat the 
 same evidence over and over again, and testify as to 
 the most minute details, imder the dawdhng of law- 
 yers paid by the day, who not only "take time, but 
 trespass upon eternity." 
 
 Such a trial is conducted very much as if the judge 
 were a private individual who had discovered that 
 one of his employees had been guilty of a theft and 
 was trying to ascertain the identity of the guilty 
 party. Practically anything tending to shed hght 
 upon the matter is acceptable as evidence, and the 
 suspected person is regarded as the most important 
 witness that can be procured. Finally, and in natural 
 course, comes the confronting of accuser and accused. 
 
 Then fellow-servant on the one hand, or formal 
 accuser upon the other, steps forward, and they go 
 at it "hammer and tongs," revealing to their master, 
 the public, or the jury, the very bottom of their souls; 
 for no man, least of all an Italian, can engage an an- 
 tagonist in debate over the question of his own guilt 
 without disclosing exactly what manner of man he is. 
 
AN AMERICAN AT VITERBO 191 
 
 With these preliminary considerations upon the 
 fundamental distinction between the Latin and the 
 Anglo-Saxon criminal procedure, and without dis- 
 cussing which theory, on general principles, is best 
 calculated to arrive at a definite and effective con- 
 clusion as to the guilt of an accused, let us enter the 
 ancient Church of San Francesco at Viterbo, and 
 Usten for a moment to the trial of the thirty-six 
 members of the Neapohtan Camorra. 
 
 It is a cool spring morning, and the small crowd 
 which daily gathers to watch the arrival of the prison- 
 ers in their black-covered wagons has dispersed; the 
 guard of infantry has marched back to the Rocca, 
 once the castle of the popes and now a barracks; 
 and only a couple of carabinieri stand before the door, 
 their white-gloved hands clasped before their belts. 
 Inside, in the extreme rear of the church, you find 
 yourself in a small inclosure seating a couple of him- 
 dred people, and a foot or so lower than the level of 
 the rest of the building. This is full of visitors from 
 Rome, wives of lawyers, townspeople, and a scatter- 
 ing of EngUsh and American motorists. A rail sep- 
 arates this — ^the only provision for spectators — ^from 
 the real court. (At the Thaw and Patterson trials 
 the guests of the participants and officials swarmed 
 all over the court-room, around and beside the jury- 
 box, inside the rail at which the prisoners were seated, 
 and occasionally even shared the dais with the judge.) 
 
 We will assume that the proceedings have not yet 
 begun, and that the advocates in their black gowns 
 are chatting among themselves or conferripg with 
 
192 AN AMERICAN AT VITERBO 
 
 their clients through the bars of the cage, which is 
 built into the right-hand side of the church and com- 
 pletely fills it. This cage, by the way, is an absolute 
 necessity where large numbers of prisoners are tried 
 together. The custom of isolating the defendant in 
 some such fashion is not pecuHar to Italy, but is in 
 use in our own country as well; and if one attends a 
 criminal trial in the city of Boston he will see the 
 accused elevated in a kind of temporary cell in the 
 middle of the court-room, and looking as if he were 
 suspended in a sort of himian bird-cage. Where, as 
 in most jurisdictions of the United States, every de- 
 fendant can deinand a separate trial as of right (which 
 he almost inevitably does demand), no inconvenience 
 is to be anticipated from allowing him his temporary 
 freedom while in the court-room in the custody of 
 an officer. But there are many cases, where three 
 or more defendants are tried together, when, even 
 in New York City, there is considerable danger that 
 the prisoners may seek the opportunity to carry out 
 a vendetta against the witnesses or to revenge them- 
 selves upon judge or prosecutor. There is much to 
 be said in favor of isolating defendants in some such 
 way, particularly where they are on trial for atro- 
 cious crimes or are likely to prove insane. The Ca- 
 morrists at Viterbo have already been incarcerated 
 for over four years — one of them died in prison — 
 and were they accessible in the court-room to their 
 relatives or criminal associates and could thus pro- 
 cure fire-arms or knives, there is no prophesying what 
 the result might be to themselves or others. Certain 
 
AN AMERICAN AT VITERBO 193 
 
 it is that the chief witness, the informer Abbate- 
 maggio, woxild have met a speedy death before any 
 of his testimony had been given. 
 
 On the opposite or left side of the church, in an 
 elevated box, sit the jury, who keep their hats on 
 throughout the proceedings. They are respectable- 
 looking citizens, rather more prepossessing than one 
 of our own petit juries and slightly less so than twelve 
 men drawn from one of the New York City special 
 panels. At the end or apex of the church is a curved 
 bench or dais with five seats. In the middle, under 
 the dome, are four rows of desks, with chairs, at 
 which sit the advocates, one or more for each 
 prisoner. The only gallery, which is above and 
 behind the jury-box, is given over to the press. At 
 all the doors and the ends of the aisles, at each side 
 of the judges' dais, and in front of the prisoners' 
 cage stand carabinieri, in their picturesque uniforms 
 and cocked hats with red and blue cockades, and a 
 captain of carabinieri stands beside each witness as 
 he gives his testimony. Thus the court, which is in 
 the form of a cross, is naturally divided into four 
 parts and a centre: in front the spectators, on the 
 right the prisoners, on the left the jury, between 
 them the lawyers, and at the end the judges and 
 officers of the assize. A mellow Ught filters down 
 from above, rather trying to the eyes. 
 
 The Camorrists, heavily shackled, are brought in 
 from a side entrance, each in custody of two carabi- 
 nieri, their chains are removed, the prisoners are 
 thrust behind the bars, and the guards step to one 
 
194 AN AMERICAN AT VITERBO 
 
 side and remain crowded around and behind the cage 
 during the session. In a separate steel cage sits Ab- 
 batemaggio, the informer, at an oblique distance of 
 about five feet from the other prisoners. A guard 
 stands between the two cages. If one meets a file of 
 these prisoners in one of the corridors, he wUl be sur- 
 prised, and perhaps embarrassed, to find that each, 
 as he approaches, will raise his shackled hands to his 
 head, remove his hat, and bow courteously, with a 
 " Buon giomo " or " Buona sera." While this may be 
 one of the imiversal customs of a polite country, one 
 cannot help feeling that it is partly due to an instinc- 
 tive desire of the accused for recognition as human 
 beings. All are scrupulously clean and dressed in the 
 heights of Italian fashion. In fact, the Camorrists 
 are much the best-dressed persons in the court-room, 
 and the judicial officials, when off duty and in fustian, 
 look a shade shabby by contrast. The funds of the 
 Camorrists seem adequate both for obtaining wit- 
 nesses and retaining lawyers; and the difference be- 
 tween one's mental pictures of a lot of Neapolitan 
 thieves and cutthroats and the apotheosized defend- 
 ants on trial is at first somewhat startling. Looking 
 at them across the court-room, they give the impres- 
 sion of being exceptionally intelligent and smartly 
 dressed men — ^not unlike a section of the grandstand 
 taken haphazard at a National League game. Closer 
 scrutiny reveals the merciless lines in most of the 
 faces, and the catlike shiftiness of the eyes. 
 
 As for the lawyers, — the avvocati, — ^they seem very- 
 much like any group of American civil lawyers and 
 
AN AMERICAN AT VITERBO 195 
 
 distinctly superior to the practitioners in our criminal 
 courts. Many are young and hope to win their 
 spurs in this celebrated case. Others are old war- 
 horses whose fortunes are tied up with those of the 
 Camorra, At least one such, Awocato Lioy, is of 
 necessity giving his services for nothing. But it is 
 when the awocato rises to address the court that the 
 distinction between him and his American brother be- 
 comes obvious; for he is an expert speaker, trained 
 in diction, enunciation, and delivery, and rarely in 
 our own country (save on the stage or in the pulpit) 
 will one hear such uniform fluency and eloquence. 
 Nor is the speech of the advocate less convincing for 
 its excellence, for these young men put a fire and 
 zeal into what they say that compel attention. 
 
 Now, if the prisoners are all seated, the captain of 
 carabinieri raps upon the floor with his scabbard, and 
 the occupants of the room, prisoners, advocates, jury, 
 and spectators, rise as the president, vice-president, 
 prosecutor, vice-prosecutor, and cancelKere enter in 
 their robes. The president makes a bow, the others 
 bow a little, the lawyers bow, and everybody sits 
 down — ^that is to say, everybody who has arisen; for 
 Don Giro Vitozzi and "Professor" Rapi, who sit 
 outside and in front of the cage (the "professor" has 
 already been confined longer than any term to which 
 he could be sentenced, and both have pleaded sick- 
 ness as an excuse for leniency), make a point of show- 
 ing their superiority to the vulgar herd by waiting 
 imtil the last moment and then giving a partial but 
 ineffectual motion as if to stand. 
 
196 AN AMERICAN AT VITERBO 
 
 The five men upon the dias are, however, worthy 
 of considerable attention. The president, who oc- 
 cupies the centre seat, is a stout, heavily built, 
 "stocky" man with a brownish-gray beard. In his 
 robes he is an imposing and dignified figure, in spite 
 of his lack of height. AH wear gowns with red and 
 gold braid and tassels, and little round caps with red 
 "topknots" and gold bands. This last ornament is 
 omitted from the uniform of the cancelliere, who is 
 the official scribe or recorder of the court. And just 
 here is noticeable a feature which tends to accelerate 
 the proceedings, for there are no shorthand minutes 
 of the testimony, and only a rough digest of what 
 goes on is made. This is, for the most part, dictated 
 by the president, under the correction of the advo- 
 cates and the officers of the court, who courteously 
 interrupt if the record appears to them inaccurate. 
 If they raise no objection the record stands as given. 
 Thus thousands of pages of generally useless matter 
 are done away with, and the record remains more 
 like the "notes" of a careful and painstaking Eng- 
 lish judge. Any particijlar bit of testimony or the 
 gist of it can usually be found very quickly, without 
 (as in our own courts of law) the stenographer hav- 
 ing to wade through hxmdreds of pages of questions 
 and answers before the matter wanted can be \m- 
 earthed, buried, like as not, under an avalanche of 
 objections, exceptions, wrangles of counsel, and irrele- 
 vant or "stricken out" testimony. 
 
 At the left of the semicircle sits the acting pro- 
 curatore del re— another small man who, on the bench, 
 
AN AMERICAN AT VITERBO 197 
 
 makes a wonderfully dignified impression. He plays 
 almost as important a part in the proceedings as the 
 president himself, and is treated with almost equal 
 consideration. This is Cavahere Santaro, one of the 
 most learned and eloquent lawyers in Italy. To hear 
 him argue a point in his crisp, clean-cut, melodious 
 voice is to realize how far superior Italian public 
 speaking is to the kind of oratory prevalent in our 
 courts, and national legislature, and on most public 
 occasions throughout the United States. Beside both 
 the president and the procuratore del re sits a "vice," 
 or assistant, to each, to take his place when absent 
 and to act as associate at other times. The cancelliere 
 occupies the seat upon the right nearest the prisoners' 
 cage. 
 
 The president having taken his place, the first 
 order of the day is the reading or revision of aU or 
 part of the record of the preceding session. This is 
 done by the cancelliere who, from time to "time, is 
 interrupted by the lawyers, Abbatemaggio, or the 
 prisoners. These interruptions are usually to the 
 point, and are quickly disposed of by the judge, al- 
 though he may allow an argument thereon at some 
 length from one of the advocates. The court then 
 proceeds with the introduction of evidence, docu- 
 mentary or otherwise, the examination of the wit- 
 nesses, or the confronting of the prisoners with then- 
 accusers. Now is immediately observable for the 
 first time the characteristic of ItaUan criminal pro- 
 cedure which has been so much misrepresented and 
 has been the cause of such adverse criticism in the 
 
198 AN AMERICAN AT VITERBO 
 
 United States and England — namely, the constant 
 interruption of the proceedings by argument or com- 
 ment from the lawyers, and by remarks and contra- 
 dictions from the prisoners and witnesses. These oc- 
 casionally degenerate into altercations of a more or 
 less personal natm-e; but they are generally stilled 
 at a single word of caution from the judge, and serve 
 to bring out and accentuate the different points at 
 issue and to make clear the position of the different 
 parties. When such interruptions occur, the pro- 
 ceedings ordinarily resemble a joint discussion going 
 on among a fairly large gathering of people presided 
 over by a skilful moderator. 
 
 A witness is testifjdng. ■ In the middle of it (and 
 "it" consists of not only what the witness has seen, 
 but what he has been told and believes) one of the 
 prisoners rises and cries out: 
 
 "That is not so! He is a Har! Abbatemaggio 
 swore thus and so." 
 
 "Nothing of the kind!" retorts the witness im- 
 patiently. 
 
 " Yes ! Yes ! " or " No ! No ! " chime in the advocates. 
 
 "Excellency! Excellency!" exclaims Abbatemag- 
 gio himself, jumping to his feet in his cage. "I said 
 in my testimony that Cuocolo did accuse Erricone," 
 etc. And he goes on for two or three minutes, ex- 
 plaining just what he did or did not say or mean, 
 while the president listens until he has had suflBcient 
 enlightenment, and stops him with a sharp "Basta!" 
 ("Enough!"). 
 
 The incident (whatever its nature) usually tends 
 
AN AMERICAN AT VITERBO 199 
 
 to elucidate the matter, and while to an outsider, 
 especially one not familiar with Itahan dialects, the 
 effect may be one of temporary confusion, it is never- 
 theless not as disorderly as it seems, and the presi- 
 dent rarely (so far as the writer could see during many 
 days of observation) loses complete command of his 
 court, or permits any one to go on talking unless for 
 a clear and useful purpose. At times, when every- 
 body seemed to be talking at once, and several law- 
 yers, Abbatemaggio, and one or two prisoners were 
 on their feet together, his handling of the situation 
 was little short of marvellous, for he would almost 
 simultaneously silence one with a sharp "S-s-s!" 
 shake his head at another, direct a third to sit down, 
 and Ksten to a fourth until he stiUed him with a well- 
 directed "Basta!" When the shouting is over, one 
 usually finds that who is the liar has been pretty 
 clearly demonstrated. 
 
 In this connection, however, it should be said that 
 the writer was perhaps fortunate (or unfortimate, as 
 the reader may prefer) in not being present on those 
 days when the scenes of greatest excitement and con- 
 fusion occurred. Several times, it is true, President 
 Bianchi has preferred to adjourn court entirely on 
 account of the uproar, rather than take extreme 
 measures against individual defendants or witnesses. 
 Thus, during the entire conduct of the case and in 
 spite of the grossest provocation, he has ordered the 
 forcible removal of only three defendants — ^that of 
 Morro on June 21, 1911, and of Alfano and Abbate- 
 maggio on July 21, 1911. On several other occasions 
 
200 AN AMERICAN AT VITERBO 
 
 he has adopted the more gentle expedient of adjourn- 
 ing the proceedings and clearing the court, and this 
 has resulted in a certaia amount of criticism from the 
 ItaUan bar, which otherwise regards his presiding as 
 a model of efficiency. The only adverse comment 
 that the writer has heard in Italy, either of the presi- 
 dent or the procuratore del re, is that both are some- 
 what lenient toward the conduct of the prisoners and 
 their advocates, and lack strength in dealing with 
 exigencies of the character just described. In the 
 long run, however, if such criticism be just, such an 
 attitude is bound to be in favor of justice, and will 
 irresistibly convince the public and the world at large 
 that this is no attempt on the part of the government 
 to "railroad" a lot of suspected tmdesirables at any 
 cost, whatever the evidence may be. 
 
 Before commenting too harshly upon this mote in 
 the eye of ItaUan procedure, it may not be irnwise to 
 consider whether any similar beam exists in our own. 
 Certainly there is a deal of interruption, contradic- 
 tion, and disputation ia our own criminal courts 
 which sometimes is not only undignified, but fre- 
 quently ends in an unseemly dispute between judge 
 and lawyers. Contempt of court is very general in 
 the United States, and we have practically no means 
 for punishing it. Moreover, these scenes in our own 
 courts do not usually assist in getting at the truth. 
 With us, once a witness has spoken and his testi- 
 mony has become a matter of record, whether he has 
 said what he meant to say or not (under the compli- 
 cated questions put in examination and cross-exam- 
 
AN AMERICAN AT VITERBO 201 
 
 ination), or whether or not he has succeeded in giving 
 an accurate impression of what he saw or knows, he 
 is hustled out of the way and made to keep silence. 
 He has Kttle, if any, chance to explain or annotate his 
 testimony. A defendant may go to jail or be turned 
 loose on the community because the witness really 
 didn't get a chance to tell his own story in his own 
 way. Now, the witness's own story in precisely his 
 own way is just what they are looking for under the 
 inquisitorial procedure, and if he is misinterpreted 
 they want to know it. The process may take longer, 
 but it makes for getting at the truth, and the ItaUans 
 regard a criminal trial as of even more importance 
 than do some of our judges, who often seem more 
 anxious to get through a record-breaking calendar 
 and "dispose of" a huge batch of cases than to get 
 at the exact facts in any particular one. There is 
 nothing "hit or miss" about the Continental method. 
 Whatever its shortcomings, whatever its limitations 
 to the cold Anglo-Saxon mind, it brings out all the 
 details and the witness's reasons. At an Italian trial 
 a witness might testify (and his evidence be consid- 
 ered as important) that he heard soimds of a scuffle 
 and a man's voice exclaim, "You have stabbed me, 
 Adolfo!" that somebody darted across the street and 
 into an alley, that an old woman whom he identifies 
 in court as the deceased's mother, and who was 
 standing beside him, cried out, "That is my son's 
 voice!" and that three or four persons came running 
 up from several different locations, each of whom 
 described, circumstantially and independently, a 
 
202 AN AMERICAN AT VITERBO 
 
 murder which he had seen perpetrated, identifying 
 the assassin by name. 
 
 In America it is doubtful whether in most juris- 
 dictions the witness would be permitted to testify 
 to anything except that he heard a scuffle, saw a 
 man run away, and that an old woman and several 
 other people thereupon said something. 
 
 It must not be supposed that the trial of the Ca- 
 morra is being conducted with the cahn of a New 
 England Sabbath service; but the writer wishes to 
 emphasize the fact that the confusion, such as it is, 
 serves a certain purpose, and that the yellings and 
 heartrending outcries described by the newspaper 
 correspondents are only occasional and much ex- 
 aggerated — except iQ so far as they might occur at 
 an ItaUan trial in America. Any one who has been 
 present at many murder trials in New York knows 
 that outbreaks on the part of Italian prisoners are 
 to be anticipated and are frequent if not customary. 
 The writer recalls more than one case where the de- 
 fendant shrieked and rolled on the floor, clutching at 
 the legs of tables, chairs, and officers, imtU dragged 
 by main force from the court-room. And at Viterbo 
 they are trying thirty-six Italians at the same time; 
 and every person participating in or coimected with 
 the affair is an ItaKan, sharing in the excitability and 
 emotional temperament of his fellows. 
 
 A noteworthy feature of this particular prosecu- 
 tion is that (due doubtless to the strength and ability 
 of the presiding judge), in spite of all interruptions 
 and the freedom of discussion, the taking of evidence 
 
AN AMERICAN AT VITERBO 203 
 
 proceeds with a rapidity greater than in America, for 
 the reason that there are no objections or exceptions, 
 or attendant argument, and, above all, no cross-exam- 
 ination, except such questions as are put by the judge 
 himself at the request of the advocates. 
 
 Finally, the system of the confronto, or confronting 
 of the accused by his accuser, deserves a word of 
 commendation, for no method could possibly be de- 
 vised whereby the real character and comparative 
 truthfulness of each would be so readily disclosed. 
 The defendant is given on this occasion free scope 
 to cross-examine the witness and deny or refute what 
 he says, and it takes ordinarily but a few minutes 
 before the mask is torn aside and each pictures him- 
 self in his true colors. Our procedure tends to deprive 
 the witnesses of personahty and to reduce them all 
 to a row of pretematuraUy solemn and formal pup- 
 pets. It is probably true that in most criminal cases 
 in America the defendant is convicted or acquitted 
 without the jury having any very clear idea of what 
 sort of person he really is. On the day of his trial 
 the prisoner makes a careful toilet, is cleanly shaved, 
 and dons a new suit of clothes and fresh linen. The 
 chances are that, as he sits at the bar of justice, he 
 will make at least as good and very possibly a more 
 favorable impression upon the jury than the witnesses 
 against him, who have far less at stake than he. Each 
 takes the stand and is sworn to tell the truth, so far 
 as they will be permitted to do so under our rules of 
 evidence. Then the district attorney proceeds to 
 try to extract their story of the crime under a storm 
 
204 AN AMERICAN AT VITERBO 
 
 of objections, exceptions, and hasty rulings from the 
 judge. Then the prisoner's lawyer (who can take 
 all the hberties he wants, as the State has no appeal 
 in case of an acquittal) proceeds to mix things up 
 generally by an unfair and confusing cross-examina- 
 tion. At last the defendant is called, and marches 
 to the stand, looking like an early Christian martyr. 
 He is carefully interrogated by his lawyer, who per- 
 mits him (if he be wise) to do nothing but deny the 
 sahent facts against him. The district attorney, to 
 be sure, has the right of cross-examination, but a skil- 
 ful criminal lawyer has plenty of opportunities to 
 "nurse" his cUent along and guide him over pitfalls; 
 and when aU is over the jury have formed no valuable 
 or accurate impression of the defendant's real char- 
 acter and personahty — whether or not, in other 
 words, he is the kind of man who would have done 
 such a thing. 
 
 In Italy (to use wJgar English) they "sic" them 
 at each other and let them fight it out, and while the 
 language of the participants is often not parUamen- 
 tary, the knowledge that they are being watched by 
 the judge and jury has a restraining effect, and the 
 presence of the carabinieri makes violence no more 
 likely than in our own courts. Occasionally, in Amer- 
 ica, where a prisoner insists on conducting his own 
 defence, a similar scene may be witnessed—always, it 
 may be affirmed, to the enlightenment of the jury. 
 On the other hand, most confrontations are attended 
 with few sensational incidents or emotional outbreaks. 
 
 The writer was fortimate enough to be present 
 
AN AMERICAN AT VITERBO 205 
 
 when "Professor" Rapi was confronted by Gennaro 
 Abbatemaggio, and, to his surprise, found that the 
 proceeding, instead of being interspersed with yells 
 of rage and vehement invocations to Heaven, 
 closely resembled a somewhat personal argument be- 
 tween two highly intelligent and deeply interested 
 men of affairs. Whatever may be Rapi's real char- 
 acter (and he is said to supply a large"part of the 
 brains of the Camorra, as well as handling all its 
 fimds), he is, as he stands up in court, a fine-looking, 
 elegantly dressed man, of poHshed manners and 
 speech. If the evidence against him is to be believed, 
 however, his mask of gentility covers a heart of med- 
 iaeval cruelty and cvmning, for he is alleged to have 
 made the plans and given the final directions to Sor- 
 tino for the murder of the Cuocolos. Rapi is a cele- 
 brated gambler, and as such may have had the ac- 
 quaintance of some decadent members of the ItaHan 
 aristocracy, who not only knew him in the betting 
 ring at the races, but frequented his estabhshment in 
 Naples, which he called the "Southern Italy Club." 
 In 1875, at the age of eighteen, he won against four 
 hundred candidates the position of instructor in clas- 
 sical languages in the municipality of Naples. Some 
 ten years later, in 1884, he moved with his parents 
 to France. At this time he was suspected of having 
 something to do with the murder of a Camorrist 
 youth, named Giacomo Pasquino, who, in fact, was 
 killed in a duel with a fellow member of the society. 
 From that time on Rapi became a professional 
 gambler, and as such was expelled from France in 
 
206 AN AMERICAN AT VITERBO 
 
 1902. Later he returned to Naples and opened a sort 
 of " Canfield's " there. At any rate, he boasts that it 
 was the centre of attraction for dukes and princes. 
 That he had any sort of acquaintance with or ad- 
 mission to aristocratic circles is entirely untrue; but 
 he certainly was a figure in the fast life of the town, 
 and used what position he had to further the ends 
 of the Camorra. It is alleged that he was the actual 
 treasiu-er of the Camorra, and disbursed the funds 
 of its central organization, apportioning the pro- 
 ceeds of robberies and burglaries among the partici- 
 pants/and acting as head receiver for all stolen goods. 
 Certainly he was a friend of "Erricone" and an asso- 
 ciate of weU-known Camorrists, and he was one of 
 the five arrested immediately after the Cuocolo mur- 
 ders on suspicion of complicity, because of his known 
 presence on the night of the crime at Torre del Greco, 
 not far from the place where the murder of Gennaro 
 Cuocolo was perpetrated. For fifty-two days he re- 
 mained in prison, and was then set at Hberty through 
 the efforts of Father Ciro Vitozzi. He continued to 
 reside in Naples untU April, 1908, when the French 
 decree against him was cancelled and he returned to 
 Paris, after holdiag a sort of informal levee at the 
 Naples railroad station, where many persons of local 
 distinction, joumaHsts, and others came to see him 
 off. It was in the following June that he says he read 
 in a Paris paper that his departure from Naples was 
 regarded as a flight. He wired to the procuratore del 
 rd at Naples, offering to place himself absolutely at 
 the disposition of the authorities; but, receiving no 
 
AN AMERICAN AT VITERBO 207 
 
 response, he returned by train to Naples to present 
 himself before the magistrates. He was promptly 
 arrested en route, and for four years has been in jail, 
 being questioned by the authorities on only three 
 occasions dtuing that period. He claims that at the 
 time of the murder he was hving in England, and his 
 elaborate ahbi is supported by a number of witnesses 
 whose testimony is more or less relevant,' 
 
 Without dilating on the individual history of this 
 sleek gentleman, be he merely gambler or full-fledged 
 accomphce in many murders, it is enough to say that 
 when confronted by Abbatemaggio he conducted 
 himself with the most suave and courteous modera- 
 tion. Alternately he would politely engage the in- 
 former in argument or ask him a question or two, 
 and then in polished sentences would address the 
 jury and spectators. 
 
 He is the antithesis of Abbatemaggio, who has an 
 insolent confidence and braggadocio about him that 
 carry with them a certain first-hand impression of 
 sincerity. In fact, the fiery little black-haired coach- 
 man has proved so conviucing to the public that the 
 Camorrists have been driven to allege that he is mad. 
 He gives no indication of madness, however, although 
 the government, to refute any such contention, has 
 an alienist, Professor Otto Lenghi, in court to keep 
 him imder constant surveillance. His memory is as- 
 tonishing and uncannily accurate. His mind works 
 with marvellous rapidity, and had he been bom in a 
 different environment he would have made his mark 
 in almost any line that he might have chosen. He 
 
208 AN AMERICAN AT VITERBO 
 
 has all the instincts and tricks of the actor, is a mas- 
 ter of repartee, extremely witty, with a tongue like 
 a razor, and dehghts the spectators with his sallies 
 and impertinences. Altogether Abbatemaggio is the 
 centre of attraction at Viterbo — and knows it. He 
 makes the comt wait on his health and convenience, 
 and has evidently made up his mind that, if his Ufe 
 is to be short, he will at least make it as merry as pos- 
 sible. Naturally he is a sort of popular idol, and a 
 confronto in which he is one of the participants 
 draws a crow4 of the townspeople, who applaud his 
 gibes and epigrams and jeer at his Camorrist oppo- 
 nent. 
 
 On the afternoon of the Rapi-Abbatemaggio con- 
 fronto the "Professor" arose with great dignity, 
 bowed low to the court and jury, folded his hands 
 over his stomach, and faced the audience with an air 
 of patient resignation. Then the captain of carabi- 
 nieri imlocked Abbatemaggio's cage, and the Uttle 
 coachman sprang to his feet, gave a twirl to his mous- 
 tache and a contemptuous glance at Rapi as if to say, 
 "Look at the old faker! See how I shall show him 
 up!" 
 
 With an attitude respectful toward the court and 
 scornful toward Rapi, he takes his stand by the pro- 
 cwratore del re and awaits his antagonist's attack. 
 The "Professor" accosts him gently, almost pathet- 
 ically. Abbatemaggio answers in cold, unsjonpa- 
 thetic tones that tell the spectators that they must 
 not be deceived by the oily address of this arch-con- 
 spirator. But Rapi, with his magnificent voice, is a 
 
AN AMERICAN AT VITERBO 209 
 
 foe to be reckoned with, and presently he enters upon 
 a denunciation of the informer that is distinctly elo- 
 quent and full of vehement sarcasm. Abbatemaggio 
 flushes and interrupts him, the "Professor" attempts 
 to proceed, but the Uttle coachman sweeps him out 
 of the way and poxirs forth a rapid-fire volley of Nea- 
 politan dialect in which he accuses Rapi of being a 
 hypocrite and a liar and a man who lives on the crim- 
 inality of others, referring specifically to various en- 
 terprises in which they have both been engaged as 
 partners. He pauses for breath, and Rapi plunges 
 in, contradicting, denouncing, and accusing in turn. 
 The prisoners by interjectory exclamations show their 
 approval. 
 
 "Sh-sh-sh!" remarks il presidente, raising a finger. 
 
 "Excellency ! Excellency!" exclaims Abbatemaggio 
 deprecatingly, as if pained that the judge should be 
 compelled to listen to such an outburst. 
 
 Presently he can restrain himself no longer, and 
 both he and Rapi begin simultaneously to harangue 
 the court, xmtil the president orders Abbatemaggio 
 to stop and the captain of carabinieri touches Rapi 
 on the shoulder. The latter is now reduced to tears 
 and wrings his hands as he calls his aged mother to 
 witness that he is an innocent man! Soon order is 
 restored, and the confronto concludes with a sort of 
 summing up of his defence on the part of the "Pro- 
 fessor." It is a model of rhetoric, rather too care- 
 fully calculated to appear as sincere as his previous 
 outbursts. He calls down the curses of God upon Ab- 
 batemaggio, who Kstens contemptuously; he pro- 
 
210 AN AMERICAN AT VITERBO 
 
 tests the purity of his hfe and motives; he weeps at 
 the irony of fate that keeps him — ^the merest ob- 
 ject of suspicion — confined in a loathsome prison. 
 Then he bows and resumes his seat by the side of 
 Father Giro Vitozzi, to whom, amid the laughter of 
 the spectators, he has referred as "that holy man 
 there." And, apart from the argimaent between him 
 and Abbatemaggio, there has reaUy been no more 
 denunciation, no more emotion, no more tears, than 
 if an ordinary criminal attorney in a New York City 
 court were summing up an important case. 
 
 Court adjourns. No sooner has the judge de- 
 parted than an outcry is heard from the cage. 
 
 "I am tired — tired — tired!" exclaims an agonized 
 voice. " I have been in prison for five years ! Every- 
 body else talks and I have to listen. I am not allowed 
 to speak, and nothiag ever happens! It is intermin- 
 able! I cannot stand it!" 
 
 It is "Erricone" having one of his periodical mo- 
 ments of relief. After all, one is not inclined to 
 blame him very much, for there is a good deal of 
 truth in what he says — owing to the way the case 
 was bungled in its earher stages. The carabinieri 
 rush up, "Erricone" is pacified by his feUow Camor- 
 rists, and quiet is restored. One inquires if there is 
 generally any more excitement than has just occiirred, 
 and is told that it has been quite a sensational day, 
 but then — that "Erricone" is always "yelling." A 
 good many defendants make a noise and cany on — 
 and so do their relatives — after court has adjourned, 
 in America. 
 
AN AMERICAN AT VITERBO 211 
 
 One is in doubt whether to beheve Abbatemaggio 
 on the one hand or Rapi on the other, and ends by- 
 concluding that it would be utterly impossible to 
 believe either. Both were acting, both playing to the 
 gallery. You know Rapi is a crook, and — ^well you 
 wouldn't trust Abbatemaggio, either, around the cor- 
 ner. And, after all, it is the word of the one against 
 that of the other so far as any particular defendant 
 is concerned. But one fixed impression remains — 
 that of the aplomb, intelligence, and cleverness of 
 these men, and the danger to a society in which they 
 and their associates follow crime as a profession. 
 Once more you study the faces of the well-dressed 
 prisoners in the cage, of the four alleged assassins of 
 Cuocolo — Morra, Sortino, de Gennaro, and Cerrato; 
 of Giuseppe Salvi, the murderer of Maria Cutinelli; 
 of Luigi Fucci, the dummy head of the Camorra; of 
 "Erricone" Alfano, the wolfish supreme chief and 
 dictator of the society; of Luigi Arena, the captain 
 of the Neapohtan burglars; of that mediaeval ras- 
 cal, "Father" Giro Vitozzi, the most picturesque 
 figure of the lot; of Desiderio, head of petty black- 
 mailing and tribute-levying industry; of Maria Sten- 
 dardo, whose house was a Camorrist hell; and of 
 Rapi, the gambling "professor" and "Moriarty" of 
 Naples — and you know instinctively that, whether 
 as an abstract proposition Abbatemaggio conveys an 
 impression of absolute honesty or not, what he has 
 said is true and that this is the Camorra — ^the real 
 Camorra, vile, heartless, treacherous! 
 
 Then, if you were asked to give your impressions 
 
212 AN AMERICAN AT VITERBO 
 
 of the way the trial was being carried on, you would 
 probably say that, considering the magnitude of the 
 task involved, the mass of evidence (there are forty 
 volumes of the preHminary examinations), the great 
 number of prisoners and the multitude of witnesses, 
 and the latitude allowed under the Italian law in the 
 matter of taking testimony, the trial was being con- 
 ducted considerably faster than would be probable in 
 America under like conditions; that the methods fol- 
 lowed are admirably calculated to ascertain the truth 
 or falsity of the charges; that the judge presides with 
 extreme fairness, com^tesy, and ability; that, all things 
 considered, there is, as a rule, less confusion or dis- 
 order than would be naturally expected — ^that, in a 
 word, the ItaHan government is making a good job 
 of it, and deserves to be congratulated. 
 
 Indeed, so far as the procedure is concerned, it is 
 not so very different from our own, and, were it not 
 for the presence of the uniforms of the carabinieri 
 and the officers pf infantry in the court-room, and 
 the huge cage in which the prisoners are confined, 
 one could easily imagine one's self in a court in Amer- 
 ica. The conduct of the trial is far more free, far less 
 formal, than with us — a fact which, the writer believes, 
 makes in the end for effectiveness, although the ex- 
 citabiHty of the Italian temperament occasionally 
 creates something of an uproar, which calls for a 
 suspension of proceedings. Doubtless the prisoners 
 give vent to cries of rage and humiHation; perhaps 
 one or two of them in the course of the trial may 
 faint or have fits (such things happen with us) ; the 
 
AN AMERICAN AT VITERBO 213 
 
 judge and lawyers may squabble, and accuser and ac- 
 cused roundly curse each other. Such things could 
 hardly help occurring in a trial lasting, perhaps, a year. 
 In fact, deaths and births have occurred among them 
 during this period, for Giro Alfano has passed away 
 and Maria Stendardo has given birth to a child; but, 
 on the whole, there is probably no more excitement, 
 no more confusion, no more bombast, and vastly less 
 sensationalism than if thirty-six members of the Black 
 Hand were being tried en masse in one of our own 
 criminal courts for a double murder, involving the 
 existence of a criminal society whose ramifications 
 extended into the national legislature and whose aflSl- 
 iations embraced the leaders of a local political 
 organization and many officials and members of the 
 New York police. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 THE MALA VITA IN AMERICA 
 
 There are a million and a half of Italians in the 
 United States, of whom nearly six himdred thousand 
 reside in New York City — more than in Rome itself. 
 Naples alone of all the cities of Italy has so large an 
 Itahan population; while Boston has one hundred 
 thousand, Philadelphia one hundred thousand, San 
 Francisco seventy thousand. New Orleans seventy 
 thousand, Chicago sixty thousand, Denver twenty- 
 five thousand, Pittsburg twenty-five thousand, Bal- 
 timore twenty thousand, and there are extensive 
 colonies, often numbering as many as ten thousand, 
 in several other cities. 
 
 So vast a foreign-born population is bound to con- 
 tain elements of both strength and weakness. The 
 north Itahans are molto simpatid to the American 
 character, and many of their national traits are singu- 
 larly like our own, for they are honest, thrifty, indus- 
 trious, law-abiding, and good-natured. The Italians 
 from the extreme south of the peninsula have fewer 
 of these qualities, and are apt to be ignorant, lazy, 
 destitute, and superstitious. A considerable percent- 
 age, especially of those from the cities, are criminal. 
 Even for a long time after landing in America, the 
 Calabrians and Sicilians often exhibit a lack of en- 
 
 214 
 
THE MALA VITA IN AMERICA 215 
 
 lightemnent more characteristic of the Middle Ages 
 than of the twentieth century. 
 
 At home they have Hved in a tumble-down stone 
 hut about fifteen feet square, haK open to the sky 
 (its only saving quaUty); in one comer the entire 
 family sleeping in a promiscuous pile on a bed of 
 leaves; in another a domestic zoo consisting of half 
 a dozen hens, a cock, a goat, and a donkey. They 
 neither read, think, nor exchange ideas. The sight 
 of a uniform means to them either a tax-gatherer, a 
 compulsory enhstment in the army, or an arrest, and 
 at its appearance the man will run and the wife and 
 children turn into stone. They are stubborn and 
 distrustful. They are the same as they were a thou- 
 sand or more years gone by. 
 
 When the writer was acting as an assistant prose- 
 cutor in New York County, a young Italian, barely 
 twenty years of age, was brought to the bar charged 
 with assault with intent to kill. The complainant 
 was a withered Sicilian woman who claimed to be 
 his wife. Both spoke an almost unintelligible dialect. 
 The case on its face was simple enough. An officer 
 testified that on a Simday morning in Mulberry Bend 
 Park, at a distance of about fifty feet from where he 
 , was standing, he saw the defendant, who had been 
 walking peaceably with the complaining witness, sud- 
 denly draw a long and deadly looking knife and pro- 
 ceed to slash her about the head and arms. It had 
 taken the officer but a moment or two to seize the 
 defendant from behind and disarm him, but in the 
 meantime he had inflicted some eleven wounds upon 
 
216 THE MALA VITA IN AMERICA 
 
 her body. No explanation had been offered for this 
 terrible assault, and the complainant had appeared 
 involuntarily before the Grand Jury and afterward 
 had to be kept in the House of Detention as a hostile 
 witness. The woman, who appeared to be about 
 fifty years old, was sworn, and on being questioned 
 stated that she had been married to the defendant 
 in Sicily three years before. She declined to admit 
 that he had attacked or harmed her in any way, con- 
 stantly mumbling: "He is my husband. Do not 
 punish him!" 
 
 The defendant, however, seemed eager to get on 
 the stand and to tell his story; nor did the introduc- 
 tion of the knife in evidence or the exhibition of the 
 woman's wounds embarrass him ia the slightest de- 
 gree. His manner was that of a man who had only 
 to explain to be entirely exonerated from blame. He 
 nodded at the jury and the judge, and scowled at the 
 complaiaant, who was speedily conducted to a place 
 where no harm could possibly come to her. When 
 at last he was sworn, he could hardly restrain himself 
 into coherency. 
 
 "Yes — ^that woman forced me to marry her!" he 
 testified in substance. "But in the eyes of God I 
 am not her husband, for' she bewitched me! Else 
 would I have married an old crone who could not 
 have borne me children? When her spells weakened 
 I left her and came to America. Here I met the 
 woman I love, — Rosina, — ^and as I had been be- 
 witched into the other marriage, we lived together 
 as man and wife for two years. Then one day a 
 
THE MALA VITA IN AMERICA 217 
 
 friend told me that the old woman had followed me 
 over the sea and was going to throw her spells upon 
 me again. But I did not inform Rosina of these 
 things. The next evening she told me that an old 
 woman had been to the house and asked for me. For 
 days my first wife lurked in the neighborhood, be- 
 seeching me to come back to her. But I told her that 
 in the eyes of God she was not my wife. Then, in 
 revenge, she cast the evil eye upon the child — sul 
 bambino — and for six weeks it aUed and then died. 
 Again the witch asked me to go with her, and again 
 I refused. This time she cast her evil eye upon my 
 wife — and Rosina grew pale and sick and took to her 
 bed. There was only one thing to do, you under- 
 stand. I resolved to slay her, just as you — giudici — 
 would have done. I bought a carving-knife and 
 sharpened it, and asked her to walk with me to the 
 park, and I would have killed her had not the police 
 prevented me. Wherefore, givdid! I pray you to 
 recall her and permit me to kill her or to decree that 
 she be hung!" 
 
 This case illustrates the depths of ignorance and 
 superstition that are occasionally to be foimd among 
 ItaUan peasant immigrants. Another actual ex- 
 perience may demonstrate the mediaeval treachery of 
 which the Sicilian Mafiuso is capable, and how Uttle 
 his manners or ideals have progressed in the last 
 five hundred years or so. 
 
 A photographer and his wife, both from Palermo, 
 came to New York and rented a comfortable home 
 with which was connected a "studio." In the course 
 
218 THE MALA VITA IN AMERICA 
 
 of time a young man— a Mafiuso from Palermo — 
 was engaged as an assistant, and promptly fell in 
 love with the photographer's wife. She was tired 
 of her husband, and together they plotted the latter's 
 murder. After various plans had been considered 
 and rejected, they determined on poison, and the 
 assistant procured enough cyanide of mercury to kill 
 a hundred photographers, and turned it over to his 
 mistress to administer to the victim in his " Marsala." 
 But at the last moment her hand lost its courage 
 and she weakly sewed the poison up for future use 
 inside the ticking of the feather bolster on the marital 
 bed. 
 
 This was not at aU to the liking of her lover, who 
 thereupon took matters into his own hands, by hiring 
 another Mafiuso to remove the photographer with 
 a knife-thrust through the heart. In order that the 
 assassin might have a favorable opportunity to effect 
 his object, the assistant, who posed as a devoted 
 friend of his employer, invited the couple to a 
 Christmas festival at his own apartment. Here they 
 all spent an animated and friendly evening together, 
 drinking toasts and singing Christmas carols, and 
 toward midnight the party broke up with mutual 
 protestations of regard. If the writer remembers 
 accurately, the evidence was that the two men em- 
 braced and kissed each other. After a series of fare- 
 wells the photographer started home. It was a clear 
 moonlight night with the streets covered with a ghs- 
 tening fall of snow. The wife, singing a song, walked 
 arm in arm with her husband until they came to a 
 
THE MALA VITA IN AMERICA 219 
 
 comer where a jutting wall cast a deep shadow across 
 the sidewalk. At this point she stepped a little ahead 
 of him, and at the same moment the hired assassin 
 shpped up behind the victim and drove his knife 
 into his back. The wife shrieked. The husband 
 staggered and fell, and the "bravo" fled. 
 
 The poUce arrived, and so did an ambulance, which 
 removed the hysterical wife and the transfixed vic- 
 tim to a hospital. Luckily the ambulance surgeon 
 did not remove the knife, and his failure to do so 
 saved the Hfe of the photographer, who in conse- 
 quence practically lost no blood and whose cortex 
 was skiKully hooked up by a dextrous surgeon. In 
 a month he was out. In another the poHce had caught 
 the would-be murderer and he was soon convicted 
 and sentenced to State prison, under a contract with 
 the assistant to be paid two hundred and fifty dollars 
 for each year he had to serve. Evidently the lover 
 and his mistress concluded that the photographer 
 bore a charmed Hfe, for they made no further homi- 
 cidal attempts. 
 
 So much for the story as an illustration of the med- 
 iaeval character of some of our Sicilian immigrants. 
 For the satisfaction of the reader's taste for the ro- 
 mantic and picturesque it should be added, however, 
 that the matter did not end here. The convict, hav- 
 ing served several years, found that the photogra- 
 pher's assistant was not keeping his part of the con- 
 tract, as a result of which the assassin's wife and chil- 
 dren were suffering for lack of food and clothing. 
 He made repeated but fruitless attempts to compel 
 
220 THE MALA VITA IN AMERICA 
 
 the party of the first part to pay up, and finally, in 
 despair, wrote to the District Attorney of New York 
 County that he could, if he would, a tale unfold that 
 would harrow up almost anybody's soul. Mr. Jerome 
 therefore, on the gamble of getting something worth 
 while, sent Detective Russo to Auburn to interview 
 the prisoner. That is how the whole story came to 
 be known. The case was put in the writer's hands, 
 and an indictment for the very unusual crime of at- 
 tempted murder (there are only one or two such 
 cases on record in New York State) was speedily 
 found against the photographer's assistant. At the 
 trial the lover saw his mistress compelled to turn 
 State's evidence against him to save herself. She 
 testified to the Christmas carols and the cyanide of 
 mercury. 
 
 "Did you ever remove this terrible poison from 
 the bolster?" demanded the defendant's counsel in 
 a sneering tone. 
 
 "No," answered the woman. 
 
 "Have you ever changed the bolster?" he per- 
 sisted.. 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Then it's there yet?" 
 
 "I— I think so," falteringly. 
 
 "I demand that this incredible yam be investi- 
 gated ! " cried the lawyer. " I ask that the court send 
 for the bolster and cut it open here in the presence of 
 the jury." 
 
 The writer had no choice but to accede to this re- 
 quest, and the bolster was hunted down and brought 
 
THE MALA VITA IN AMERICA 221 
 
 into court. With some anxiety both sides watched 
 while the lining was sUt with a penknife. A few 
 feathers fluttered to the floor as the fingers of the wit- 
 ness felt inside and came in contact with the poison. 
 The assistant was convicted of attempted murder on 
 the convict's testimony, and sentenced to Sing Sing 
 for twenty-five years. That was the end of the sec- 
 ond lesson. 
 
 ' About a month afterward the defendant's counsel 
 made a motion for a new trial on the ground that the 
 convict now admitted his testimony to have been 
 wholly false, and produced an affidavit from the as- 
 sassin to that effect. Naturally so startling an alle- 
 gation demanded investigation. Yes, insisted the 
 "bravo," it was all made up, a "camorra" — ^not a 
 word of truth in it, and he had invented the whole 
 thing in order to get a vacation from State prison 
 and a free ride to New York. However, the court 
 denied the motion. The writer procured a new in- 
 dictment against the assassin — ^this time for perjury 
 — and he was sentenced to another additional term 
 in prison. What induced this sudden and extraor- 
 dinary change of mind on his part can only be sur- 
 mised. 
 
 These two cases are extreme examples of the med- 
 isevalism that to a considerable degree prevails in 
 New York City, probably in Chicago and Boston, 
 and wherever there is an excessive south Italian 
 population. 
 
 The conditions under which a large number of 
 Italians live in this countiy are favorable not only 
 
222 THE MALA VITA IN AMERICA 
 
 to the continuance of ignorance, but to the develop- 
 ment of disease and crime, Naples is bad enough/^ 
 no doubt. The people there are poverty-strickeii 
 and homeless. But in New York City they are worse 
 than homeless. It is better far to sleep under the 
 stars than in a stuffy room with ten or twelve other 
 persons. Let the reader climb the stairs of some of 
 the tenements in Elizabeth Street, or go through 
 those in Union Street, Brooklyn, and he will get first- 
 hand evidence. This is generally true of the lower 
 class of Italians throughout the United States, 
 whether in the city or country. They hve under 
 worse conditions than at home. You may go through 
 the railroad camps and see twenty men sleeping to- 
 gether in a one-room hut of lath, tar-paper, and 
 clay. The writer knows of one Italian laborer in 
 Massachusetts who slept in a floorless mud hovel 
 about six feet square, with one hole to go in and out 
 by and another in the roof for ventilation — ^in order 
 to save $1.75 per month. All honor to him! Gari- 
 baldi was of just such stuff, only he suffered in a bet- 
 ter cause. In Naples the young folks are out aU day 
 in the sun. Here they are indoors all the year 
 round. For the consequences of this change see Dr. 
 Peccorini's article in the Forum for January, 1911, 
 on the tuberculosis that soon develops among Italians 
 who abroad were accustomed to live in the country 
 but here are forced to exist in tenements. 
 
 Now, for historic reasons, these south Itahans 
 hate and distrust all governmental control and de- 
 spise any appeal to the ordinary tribunals of justice 
 
THE MALA VITA IN AMERICA 223 
 
 to assert a right or to remedy a wrong. It has been 
 justly said by a celebrated ItaKan writer that, in 
 effect, there is some instinct for civil war in the heart 
 of every Itahan. The insufferable tyranny of the 
 Bourbon dynasty made every outlaw dear to the 
 hearts of the oppressed people of the Kingdom of the 
 Two Sicilies. Even if he robbed them, they felt that 
 he was the lesser of two evils, and sheltered Hm 
 from the authorities. Out of this feeling grew the 
 "Omert^," which paralyzes the arm of jiistice both 
 in Naples and Sicily. The late Marion Crawford 
 thus summed up the Sicihan code of honor: 
 
 According to this code, a man who appeals to the law 
 against his fellow man is not only a fool but a coward, and he 
 who cannot take care of himself without the protection of the 
 police is both. ... It is reckoned as cowardly to betray an 
 offender to justice, even though the offence be against one's 
 self, as it would be not to avenge an injury by violence. It 
 is regarded as dastardly and contemptible in a woimded man 
 to betray the name of his assailant, because if he recovers he 
 must naturally expect to take vengeance himself. A rhymed 
 Sicilian proverb sums up this principle, the supposed speaker 
 being one who has been stabbed. " If I live, I will kill thee," 
 it says; "if I die, I forgive theel" 
 
 Any one who has had anything to do with the ad- 
 ministration of criminal justice in a city with a large 
 Itahan population must have foimd himself con- 
 stantly hampered by precisely this same "Omerta." 
 The south Itahan feels obhged to conceal the name 
 of the assassin and very likely his person, though he 
 himself be but an accidental witness of the crime; 
 and, while the writer knows of ^o instance in New 
 
224 THE MALA VITA IN AMERICA 
 
 York City where an innocent man has gone to prison 
 himself rather than betray a criminal, Signor Cutera, 
 formerly chief of police in Palermo, states that there 
 have been many cases in Sicily where men have suf- 
 fered long terms of penal servitude and even have 
 died in prison raither than give information to the 
 poUce. 
 
 In point of fact, however, the "Omerta" is not 
 confined to Italians. It is a common attribute of all 
 who are opposed to authority of any kind, including 
 small boys and criminals, and with the latter arises 
 no more from a half chivalrous loyalty to their fellows 
 than it does from hatred of the poUce and a imiform 
 desire to block their efforts (even if a personal adver- 
 sary should go unpunished in consequence), fear that 
 complaint made or assistance given to the authorities 
 will result in vengeance being taken upon the com- 
 plainant by some comrade or relative of the accused, 
 distrust of the abiHty of the police to do anything 
 anjrway, disgust at the delay involved, and lastly, 
 if not chiefly, the realization that as a witness in a 
 court of justice the informer as a professional crim- 
 inal would have Uttle or no standing or credence, and 
 in addition would, under cross-examination, be com- 
 pelled to lay bare the secrets of his imsavory past, 
 perhaps resulting indirectly in a term in prison for 
 himself.* Thus may be accounted for much of the 
 supposed "romantic, if misguided, chivalry" of the 
 south Italian. It is common both to him and to the 
 Bowery tough. The writer knew personally a pro- 
 
 * Much more likely in Italy than in the United States. 
 
THE MALA VITA IN AMERICA 225 
 
 fessional crook who was twice almost shot to pieces 
 in Chatham Square, New York City, and who per- 
 sistently declined, even on his dying bed, to give a 
 hint of the identity of his assassins, announcing that 
 if he got well he "would attend to that Uttle matter 
 himself." Much of the romance surrounding crime 
 and criminals, on examination, "fades into the light 
 of common day" — ^the obvious product not of ideal- 
 ism, but of well-calculated self-interest. 
 
 As illustrating the backwardness of our Itahan 
 fellow-citizens 'm coming forward when the crim- 
 inality of one of their countrymen is at stake, the 
 last three cases of kidnapping in New York City 
 may be mentioned. 
 
 About a year and a half ago the httle boy of Dr. 
 Scimeca, of 2 Prince Street, New York, was taken 
 from his home. From outside sources the police 
 heard that the child had been stolen, but, although 
 he was receiving constant letters and telephonic com- 
 mimications from the kidnappers, Dr. Scimeca would 
 not give them any information. It is known on 
 pretty good authority that the sum of $10,000 was 
 at first demanded as a ransom, and was lowered by 
 degrees to $5,000, $2,500, and finally to $1,700. Dr. 
 Scimeca at last made terms with the kidnappers, 
 and was told to go one evening to City Park, where 
 he is said to have handed $1,700 to a stranger. The 
 child was ioxmd wandering aimlessly in the streets 
 next day, after a detention of nearly three months. 
 
 The second case was that of Vincenzo Sabello, a 
 grocer of 386 Broome Street, who lost his httle boy 
 
226 THE MALA VITA IN AMERICA 
 
 on August 26, 1911. After thirty days he reported 
 the matter to the police, but shortly after tried to 
 throw them off the track by sajdng that he had been 
 mistaken, that the boy had not been kidnapped, and 
 that he wished no assistance. Finally he ordered 
 the detectives out of his place. About a month later 
 the child was recovered, but not, according to rehable 
 infoimation, imtil Mr. SabeUo had handed over 
 $2,500. 
 
 Pending the recovery of the Sabello boy, a third 
 child was stolen from the top floor of a house at 119 
 Elizabeth Street. The father, Leonardo Quartiano, 
 reported the disappearance, and in answer to ques- 
 tions stated that he had received no letters or tele- 
 phone messages. "Why should I? " he inquired, with 
 uplifted hands and the most guileless demeanor. "I 
 am poor! I am a humble fishmonger." In point of 
 fact, Quartiano at the time had a pocketful of black- 
 mail letters, and after four weeks paid a good ransom 
 and got back his boy. 
 
 It is impossible to estimate correctly the number 
 of Italian criminals in America or their influence 
 upon our police statistics; but in several classes of 
 crime the Italians fmnish from fifteen to fifty per 
 cent of those convicted. In murder, assault with in- 
 tent to kill, blackmail, and extortion they head the 
 list, as well as in certain other offences unnecessary 
 to describe more fuUy but prevalent in Naples and 
 the South. 
 
 Joseph Petrosino, the able and fearless oflBcer of 
 New York police who was murdered in Palermo 
 
THE MALA VITA IN AMERICA 227 
 
 while in the service of the country of his adoption, 
 was, while he Uved, our greatest guaranty of protec- 
 tion against the Italian criminal. But Petrosino is 
 gone. The fear of him no longer will deter Italian 
 ex-convicts from seeking asylum in the United States. 
 He once told the writer that there were five thousand 
 Italian ex-convicts in New York City alone, of whom 
 he knew a large proportion by sight and name.* Sig- 
 nor Ferrero, the noted historian, is reported to have 
 stated, on his recent visit to America, that there were 
 thirty thousand Italian criminals in New York City. 
 Whatever their actual number, there are quite 
 enough at all events. 
 
 By far the greater portion of these criminals, 
 whether ex-convicts or novices, are the products or 
 by-products of the influence of the two great secret 
 societies of southern Italy. These societies and the 
 unorganized criminal propensity and atmosphere 
 which they generate, are known as the "Mala 
 Vita." 
 
 The Mafia, a purely Sicilian product, exerts a much 
 more obvious influence in America than the Camorra, 
 since the Mafia is powerful all over Sicily, while the 
 Camorra is practically confined to the city of Naples 
 and its environs. The Sicihans in America vastly 
 outnumber the Neapolitans. Thus in New York 
 City for every one Camorrist you wiU find seven 
 or eight Mafiusi. But they are all essentially of a 
 
 * Petrosino is a national hero in Italy, where he was known as 
 " II Sherlock Hohnes d'ltalia "—"the Italian Sherlock Hohnes." 
 Many novels in which he figures as the central character have a 
 wide circulation there. 
 
228 THE MALA VITA IN AMERICA 
 
 piece, and the artificial distinction between them in 
 Italy disappears entirely in America. 
 
 Historically the Mafia burst from a soil fertilized 
 by the blood of martyred patriots, and represented 
 the revolt of the people against all forms of the tyr- 
 annous government of the Boiu-bons; but the fact 
 remains that, whatever its origin, the Mafia to-day 
 is a criminal organization, haAong, like the Camorra 
 for its ultimate object blackmail and extortion. Its 
 lower ranks are recruited from the scum of Palermo, 
 who, combining extraordinary physical courage with 
 the lowest type of viciousness, generally five by the 
 same means that supports the East Side "cadet" 
 in New York City,"and who end either in prison or 
 on the dissecting-table, or gradually develop into 
 real Mafiusi and perhaps gain some influence. 
 
 It is, in addition, an ultra-successful criminal po- 
 litical machine, which, under cover of a pseudo-prin- 
 ciple, deals in petty crime, wholesale blackmail, po- 
 litical jobbery, and the sale of elections, and may 
 fairly be compared to the lowest j*ypes of politico- 
 criminal clubs or societies in New York City. In 
 Palmero it is made up of " gangs " of toughs and crim- 
 inals, not unlike the Camorrist gangs of Naples, but 
 without their organization, and is kept together by 
 personal allegiance to some leader. Such a leader is 
 almost always under the patronage of a "boss" in 
 New York or a 'padrone in Italy, who uses his influence 
 to protect the members of the gang when in legal diffi- 
 culties and find them jobs when out of work and in 
 need of funds. Thus the "boss" can rely on the 
 
THE MALA VITA IN AMERICA 229 
 
 gang's assistance in elections in return for favors at 
 other times. Such gangs may act in harmony or be 
 in opejnhpstility or conflict with one another, but all 
 are jilted as against the poUce, and exhibit much 
 t^e same sort of "Omerta" in Chatham Square as 
 in Palermo. The difference between the Mafia and 
 Camorra and the "gangs" of New York City lies in 
 the fact that the latter are so much less numerous 
 and powerful, and bribery and corruption so much 
 less prevalent, that they can exert no practical in- 
 fluence in politics outside the Board of Aldermen, 
 whereas the Italian societies of the Mala Vita exert 
 an influence everywhere — in the Chamber of Depu- 
 ties, the Cabinet, and even closer to the King. In 
 fact, political corruption has been and still is of a 
 character in Italy luckily unknown in America — ^not 
 in the amounts of money paid over (which are large 
 enough), but in the calm and matter-of-fact attitude 
 adopted toward the subject in Parliament and else- 
 where. 
 
 The overwhelming majority of Itahan criminals 
 in this country come from Sicily, Calabria, Naples, 
 and its environs. They have Uved, mo^t of their 
 Uves, upon the ignorance, fear, and superstitions of 
 their fellow-countrymen. They know that so long 
 as they confine their criminal operations to Itahans 
 of the lower class they need have little terror of the 
 law, since, if need be, their victims will harbor them 
 from the police and perjure themselves in their de- 
 fence. For the ignorant Itahan brings to this coun- 
 try with him the same attitude toward government 
 
230 THE MALA VITA IN AMERICA 
 
 and the same distrast of the law that characterized 
 him and his feUow-townsmen at home, the same 
 OmertS, that makes it so difficult to convict any Ital- 
 ian of a serious offence. The ItaUan crook is qmck- 
 witted and soon grasps the legal situation. He finds 
 his feUow countrymen prospering, for they are gen- 
 erally a hard-working and thrifty lot, and he pro- 
 ceeds to levy tribute on them just as he did in Naples 
 or Palermo. If they refuse his demands, stabbing 
 or bomb-throwing show that he has lost none of his 
 ferocity. Where they are of the most ignorant type 
 he threatens them with the "evil eye," the " curse 
 of God," or even with sorceries. The number of 
 ItaUans who can be thus terrorized is astonishing. 
 Of course, the mere possibility of such tMngs argues 
 a state of medisevalism. But mere mediaevaUsm 
 would be comparatively unimportant did it not sup- 
 ply the principal element favorable to the growth 
 of the Mala Vita, apprehended with so 'much dread 
 by many of the citizens of the United States. 
 
 Now, what are the phases of the Mala Vita — ^the 
 Camorra, the Black Hand, the Mafia — which are 
 to-day observable in the United States and which 
 may reasonably be anticipated in the future? 
 
 In the first place, it may be safely said that of the 
 Camorra in its historic sense — ^the Camorra of the 
 ritual, of the "Capo in Testa" and "Capo in Trina" 
 highly organized with a self-perpetuating body of 
 officers acting under a supreme head — ^there is no 
 trace. Indeed, as has already been explained, this 
 phase of the Camorra, save in the prisons, is prac- 
 
THE MALA VITA IN AMERICA 231 
 
 tically over, even in Naples. But of the Mala Vita 
 there is evidence enough. 
 
 Every large city, where people exist under unwhole- 
 some conditions, has some such phenomenon. In 
 Palermo we have the traditional Mafia — a state of 
 mind, if you will, ineradicable and all-pervasive. 
 Naples festers with the Camorra as with a venereal 
 disease, its whole body poUtic infected with it, so 
 that its very breath is foul and its moral eyesight 
 astigmatized. In Paris we find the Apache, abortive 
 offspring of prostitution and brutaUty, the twin 
 brother of the Camorrista. In New York there are 
 the "gangs," composed of pimps, thugs, cheap 
 thieves, and hangers-on of criminals, which rise and 
 wane in power according to the honesty and effi- 
 ciency of the pohce, and who, from time to time, hold 
 much the same relations to police captains and in- 
 spectors as the various gangs of the Neapolitan Ca- 
 morra do to commissaries and delegati of the "Pub- 
 lic Safety." Corresponding to these, we have the 
 "Black Hand" gangs among the Italian population 
 of om- largest cities. Sometimes the two coalesce, 
 so that in the second generation we occasionally find 
 an Italian, Hke Paul Kelly, leading a gang composed 
 of other Italians, Irish- Americans, and "tough guys" 
 of all nationalities. But the genuine Black Hander 
 (the real Camorrist or "Mafiuoso") works alone or 
 with two or three of his fellow-countrymen. 
 
 Curiously enough, there is a society of criminal 
 young men in New York City who are almost the 
 exact coimterpart of the Apaches of Paris. They are 
 
232 THE MALA VITA IN AMERICA 
 
 known by the euphonious name of "Waps" or 
 "Jacks." These are young ItaUan-Americans who 
 allow themselves to be supported by one or two 
 women, almost never of their own race. These pimps 
 affect a peculiar cut of hair, and dress with half- 
 turned-up' velvet collar, not imhke the old-time Ca- 
 morrist, and have manners and customs of their 
 own. They frequent the lowest order of dance-halls, 
 and are easily known by their picturesque styles of 
 dancing, of which the most popular is yclept the 
 "Nigger." They form one variety of the many 
 "gangs" that infest the city, are as quick to flash a 
 knife as the Apaches, and, as a cult by themselves, 
 form an interesting sociological study. 
 
 The majority of the followers of the Mala Vita — 
 the Black Hapders — are not actually of Italian birth, 
 but belong to the second generation. As children 
 they avoid school, later haunt "pool" parlors and 
 saloons, and soon become infected with a desire for 
 "easy money," which makes them glad to follow the 
 lead of some experienced capo maestra. To them he 
 is a sort of demi-god, and they readily become his 
 cHents in crime, taking their wages in experience or 
 whatever part of the proceeds he doles out to them. 
 Usually the "boss" tells them nothing of the inner 
 workings of his plots. They are merely instructed to 
 dehver a letter or to blow up a tenement. The same 
 name is used by the Black Hander to-day for his 
 "assistant" or "apprentice" who actually commits 
 a crime as that by which he was known under the 
 Bourbons in 1820. In those early days the second- 
 
THE MALA VITA IN AMERICA 233 
 
 grade'^'member of the Camorra was known as a fic- 
 ciotto. To-day the apprentice or "helper" of the 
 Black Hander is termed a picciott' in the cUpped dia- 
 lect of the South. But the picciotto of New York is 
 never raised to the grade of Camorrista, since the 
 organization of the Camorra has never been trans- 
 ferred to this country. Instead he becomes in course 
 of time a sort of bully or bad man on his own hook, a 
 criminal "swell," who does no manual labor, rarely 
 coEomits a crime with his own hands, and lives by 
 his brain. Such a one was Micelli Palliozzi, arrested 
 for the kidnapping of the Scimeco and Sabello chil- 
 dren mentioned above — a dandy who did nothing 
 but swagger around the Italian quarter. 
 
 Generally each capo maestra works for himseK with 
 his own handful of followers, who may or may not 
 enjoy his confidence, and each gang has its own terri- 
 tory, held sacred by the others. The leaders all 
 know each other, but never trespass upon the others' 
 preserves, and rarely attempt to blackmail or terror- 
 ize any one but Itahans. They gather around them 
 associates from their own part of Italy, or the sons of 
 men whom they have known at home. Thus for a 
 long time CostabUi was leader of the Calabrian Ca- 
 morra in New York, and held undisputed sway of 
 the territory south of Houston Street as far as Canal 
 Street and from Broadway to the East River. On 
 September 15, last, Costabih was caught with a bomb 
 in his hand, and he is now doing a three-year bit up 
 the river. Sic transit gloria mundi ! 
 
 The ItaHan criminal and his American offspring 
 
234 THE MALA VITA IN AMERICA 
 
 have a sincere contempt for American criminal law. 
 They are used by experience or tradition to arbitrary 
 police methods and prosecutions unhampered by 
 Anglo-Saxon rules of evidence. When the Italian 
 crook is actually brought to the bar of justice at home, 
 that he will "go" is generally a foregone conclusion. 
 There need be no complainant in Italy. The govern- 
 ment is the whole thing there. But, in America, if 
 the criminal can "reach" the complaining witness 
 or "call him off" he has nothing to worry about. 
 This he knows he can easily do through the terror of 
 the Camorra. And thus he knows that the chances 
 he<takes are comparatively small, including that of 
 conviction if he is ever tried by a jury of his American 
 peers, who are loath to find a man guUty whose lan- 
 guage and motives they are unable to understand. 
 All this the young Camorrist is perfectly aware of 
 and gambles on. 
 
 One of the unique phenomena of the Mala Vita 
 in America is the class of ItaHans who are known as 
 "men of honor." These are native Italians who have 
 been convicted of crime in their own country and 
 have either made their escape or served their terms. 
 Some of these may have been coimterfeiters at home. 
 They come to America either as stokers, sailors, stew- 
 ards, or stowaways, and, while they can not get pass- 
 ports, it is surprising how lax the authorities are in 
 permitting their escape. The spirit of the ItaHan 
 law is willing enough, but its fleshly enforcement is 
 curiously weak. Those who have money enough 
 manage to reach France or Holland and come over 
 
THE MALA VITA IN AMERICA 235 
 
 first or second-class. The main fact is that they get 
 here — ^law or no law. Once they arrive in America, 
 they realize their opportunities and actually start in 
 to turn over a new leaf. They work hard; they 
 become honest. They may have been Camorrists or 
 Mafiusi at home, but they are so no longer. They 
 are "on the level," and stay so; only — they are "men 
 of honor." And what is the meaning of that? Simply 
 that they keep their mouths, eyes, and ears shut so 
 far as the Mala Vita is concerned. They are not 
 against it. They might even assist it passively. 
 Many of these erstwhile criminals pay through the 
 nose for respectability — the Camorrist after his 
 kind, the Mafius' after his kind. Sometimes the 
 banker who is paying to a Camorrist is blackmailed 
 by a Mafius'. He straightway complains to his 
 own bad man, who goes to the "butter-in" and says 
 in effect: "Here! What are you doing? Don't you 
 know So-and-So is under my protection?" 
 
 "Oh!" answers the Mafius'. "Is he? WeU, if 
 that is so, I'll leave him alone — as long as he is pay- 
 ing for protection by somebo^dy." 
 
 The reader will observe how the silence of "the 
 man of honor" is not remotely associated with the 
 OmertS.. As a rule, however, the "men of honor" 
 form a privileged and negatively righteous class, and 
 are let strictly alone by virtue of their evil past. 
 
 The number of south Italians who now occupy 
 positions of respectability in New York and who have 
 criminal records on the other side would astound even 
 their compatriots. Even several well-known busi- 
 
236 THE MALA VITA IN AMERICA 
 
 ness men, bankers, journalists, and others have been 
 convicted of something or other in Italy. Occasion- 
 ally they have been sent to jail ; more often they have 
 been convicted in their absence — condannati in con- 
 tumacia — ^and dare not return to their native land. 
 Sometimes the offences have been serious, others have 
 been merely technical. At least one popular ItaUan 
 banker in New York has been convicted of murder — 
 but the.matter was arranged at home so that he treats 
 it in a humourous vein. Two other bankers are 
 fugitives from justice, and at least one editor. 
 
 To-day most of these men are really respectable 
 citizens. Of course some of them are a bad lot, but 
 they are known and avoided. Yet the fact that 
 even the better class of ItaUans in New York are 
 thoroughly familiar with the phenomena surround- 
 ing the Mala Vita is favorable to the spread of a 
 certain amoxmt of Camorrist activity. There are a 
 niunber of influential bosses, or capi maestra, who 
 are ready to undertake almost any kind of a job for 
 from twenty dollars up, or on a percentage. Here is 
 an illustration. 
 
 A well-known Italian importer in New York City 
 was owed the sum of three thousand dollars by an- 
 other Italian, to whom he had loaned the money 
 without security and who had abused his confidence. 
 Finding that the debtor intended to cheat him out 
 of the money, although he could easily have raised 
 the amotmt of the debt had he so wished, the im- 
 porter sent for a Camorrist and told him the story. 
 
 "You shall be paid," said the Camorrist. 
 
THE MALA VITA IN AMERICA 237 
 
 Two weeks later the importer was summoned to a 
 cellar on Mott Street. The Camorrist conducted 
 him down the stairs and opened the door. A candle- 
 end flaring on a barrel showed the room crowded 
 with rough-looking Italians and the debtor crouch- 
 ing in a comer. The Camorrist motioned to the 
 terrified victim to seat himself by the barrel. No 
 word was spoken and amid deathly silence the man 
 obeyed. At last the Camorrist turned to the im- 
 porter and said: 
 
 "This man owes you three thousand dollars, I 
 beHeve." 
 
 The importer nodded. 
 
 "Pay what you justly owe," ordered the Camor- 
 rist. 
 
 Slowly the reluctant debtor produced a roll of 
 bills and counted them out upon the barrel-head. At 
 five himdred he stopped and looked at the Camor- 
 rist. 
 
 "Go on!" directed the latter. 
 
 So the other, with beads of sweat on his brow, con- 
 tinued until he reached the two thousand-dollar 
 mark. Here the bUls seemed exhausted. The im- 
 porter by this time began to feel a certain reticence 
 about his part in the matter — ^there might be some 
 widows and orphans somewhere. The :bad man 
 looked inquiringly at him, and the importer mum- 
 bled something to the effect that he "would let it 
 go at that." But the bad man misunderstood what 
 his client had said and ordered the bankrupt to pro- 
 ceed. So he did proceed to puU out another thou- 
 
238 THE MALA VITA IN AMERICA 
 
 sand doUars from an inside pocket and add it to the 
 pile on the barrel-head. The Camorrist nodded, 
 picked up the money, recounted it, and removed 
 three hundred doUars, handing the rest to the im- 
 porter. 
 
 "I have deducted the camorra" said he. 
 
 The bravos formed a hne along the cellar to the 
 door, and, as the importer passed on his way out, 
 each removed his hat and wished him a huona sera. 
 That importer certainly will never contribute toward 
 a society for the purpose of eradicating the "Black 
 Hand" from, the city of New York. He says it is the 
 greatest thing he knows. 
 
 But the genuine Camorrist or Mafius' would be 
 highly indignant at being called a "Black Hander." 
 His is an ancient and honorable profession; he is no 
 common criminal, but a "man peculiarly sensitive in 
 matters of honor," who for a consideration wiU see 
 that others keep their honorable agreements. 
 
 The writer has received authoritative reports of 
 three instances of extortion which are probably pro- 
 totj^es of many other varieties. The first is inter- 
 esting because it shows a Mafius' pljdng his regular 
 business and coming here for that precise purpose. 
 There is a large wholesale lemon trade in New^York 
 City, and various growers in Italy compete for it. 
 Not long past, a well-dressed Itahan of good appear- 
 ance and address rented an office in the World Build- 
 ing. His name on the door bore the suffix "Agent." 
 He was, indeed, a most effective one, and he secured 
 practically all the lemon business among the Itahans 
 
THE MALA VITA IN AMERICA 239 
 
 for his principals, for he was a famous capo mafia, 
 and his customers knew that if they did not buy from 
 the growers vmder his "protection" that something 
 might, and very probably woiild, happen to their 
 families in or near Palermo. At any rate, few of them 
 took any chances in the matter, and his trip to Amer- 
 ica was a financial success. 
 
 In much the same way a notorious crook named 
 Lupo forced all the retail Italian grocers to buy from 
 him, although his prices were considerably higher 
 than those of his competitors. 
 
 Even Americans have not been slow to avail them- 
 selves of Camorrist methods. There is a sewing- 
 machine company which sells its machines to Italian 
 families on the instalment plan. A regular agent so- 
 Ucits the orders, places the machines, and collects 
 the initial dollar; but the moment a subscriber in 
 Mulberry Street falls in arrears his or her name is 
 placed on a black hst, which is turned over by this 
 enterprising business house to a "collector," who is 
 none other than the leading Camorrist, "bad man," 
 or Black Hander of the neighborhood. A knock on 
 the door from his fist, followed by the connotative 
 expression on his face, results almost uniformly in 
 immediate payment of all that is due. Needless to 
 say, he gets his camarra — a good one — on the money 
 that otherwise might never be obtained. 
 
 It is probable that we should haye this kind of 
 thing among the Italians in America even if the Nea- 
 politan Camorra and the Sicilian Mafia had never 
 existed, for it is the precise kind of crime that seems 
 
240 THE MALA VITA IN AMERICA 
 
 to be spontaneously generated among a suspicious, 
 ignorant, and superstitious people. The Italian is 
 keenly alive to the dramatic, sensational, and pictu- 
 resque; he loves to intrigue, and will imagine plots 
 against him when none exists. If an Italian is late 
 for a business engagement the man with whom he 
 has his appointment will be convinced that there is 
 some conspiracy afoot, even if his friend has merely 
 been delayed by a block on the subway. Thus, he 
 is a good subject for any wily lago that happens 
 along. The Italians in America are the most thrifty 
 of aU our immigrant citizens. In five years their de- 
 posits in the banks of New York State amounted to 
 over one hundred million dollars. The local Italian 
 crooks avail themselves of the universal fear of the 
 vendetta, and let it be generally known that trouble 
 will visit the banker or importer who does not "come 
 across" handsomely. In most cases these Black 
 Handers are ex-convicts with a pretty general repu- 
 tation as "bad men." It is not necessary for them 
 to phrase their demands. The tradesman who is 
 honored with a morning call from one of this gentry 
 does not need to be told the object of the visit. The 
 mere presence of the feUow is a threat; and, if it is 
 not acceded to, the front of the building will probably 
 be blown out by a dynamite bomb in the course of 
 the next six weeks — ^whenever the gang of which-^he 
 bad man is the leader can get aroimd to it. And the 
 bad man may perhaps have a still badder man who is 
 preying upon him. Very often one of these leaders 
 or bosses will run two or three groups, all operating 
 
THE MALA VITA IN AMERICA 241 
 
 at the same time. They meet in the back rooms of 
 saloons behind locked doors, under pretence of wish- 
 ing to play a game of zecchinetta unmolested, or in the 
 gloaming in the middle of a city park or undeveloped 
 property on the outskirts. There the different mem- 
 bers of the gang get their orders and stations, and 
 perhaps a few dollars advance wages. It is naturally 
 quite impossible to guess the number of successful 
 and unsuccessful attempts at blackmail among Ital- 
 ians, as the amoimt of undiscovered crime through- 
 out the country at large is incomputable. No word 
 of it comes from the Ups of the victims, who are in 
 mortal terror of the vendetta — of meeting some 
 casual stranger on the street who will significantly 
 draw the forefinger of his right hand across his 
 throat. 
 
 There is rather more chance to find and convict 
 a kidnapper than a bomb-thrower, so that, as a means 
 of extortion, child-snatching is less popular than the 
 mere demand for the victim's money or his life. On 
 the other hand it is probably much more effective in 
 accompUshing its result. But America will not stand 
 for kidnapping, and, although the latter occurs oc- 
 casionally, the number of cases is insignificant com- 
 pared with those in which dynamite is the chief fac- 
 tor. In 1908, there were forty-four bomb outrages 
 reported in New York City. There were seventy ar- 
 rests and nine convictions. During the present year 
 (1911) there have been about sixty bomb cases, but 
 there have been none since September 8, since De- 
 tective Carrao captured Rizzi, a -picdoW, in the act 
 
242 THE MALA VITA IN AMERICA 
 
 of lighting a bomb in the hallway of a tenement 
 house. 
 
 This case of Rizzi is an enlightening one for the 
 student of social conditions in New York, for Rizzi 
 was no Orsini, not even a Guy Fawks, nor yet was he 
 an outlaw in his own name. He was simply a picciott' 
 (pronounced "pish-ot") who did what he was told 
 in order that some other man who did know why 
 might cany out a threat to blow up somebody 
 who had refused to be blackmailed. It is practi- 
 cally impossible to get inside the complicated emo- 
 tions and motives that lead a man to become an 
 imderstudy in dynamiting. Rizzi probably got well 
 paid; at any rate, he was constantly demonstrating 
 his fitness "to do big things in a big way," and be 
 received into the small company of the elect — to go 
 forth and blackmail on his own hook and hire some 
 other ficdott' to set off the bombs. 
 
 Whoever the capo maestro that Rizzi worked for, 
 he was not only a deep-dyed villain, but a brainy 
 one. The gang hired a store and pretended to be en- 
 gaged in the milk business. They carried the bombs 
 in the steel trays holding the milk bottles and cans, 
 and, in the costume of peaceful vendors of the lacteal 
 fluid, they entered the tenements and did their dam- 
 age to such as failed to pay them tribute. The man- 
 ner of his capture was dramatic. A real milkman 
 for whom Rizzi had worked in the past was marked 
 out for slaughter. He had been blown up twice al- 
 ready. While he slept his wife heard some one mov- 
 ing in the hall. Looking out through a small window, 
 
THE MALA VITA IN AMERICA 243 
 
 she saw the ex-employee fumble with something and 
 then turn out the gas on the landing. Her husband, 
 awakened by her exit and return, asked sleepily what 
 the matter was. 
 
 "I saw Rizzi out in the hall," she answered. "It 
 was funny — ^he put out the Ught!" 
 
 In a moment the milkman was out of bed and gaz- 
 ing, with his wife, into the street. They saw Rizzi 
 come down with his tray and pass out of sight. So 
 did a couple of Itahan detectives from Head-quarters 
 who had been following him and now, at his very 
 heels, watched him enter another tenement, take a 
 bomb from his tray, and ignite a time fuse. They 
 caught him with the thing ahght in his hand. Mean- 
 while the other bomb had gone off and blown up the 
 milkman's tenement. 
 
 There is some ancient history in regard to these 
 matters which ought to be retold in the light of 
 modem knowledge; for example, the case of Patti, 
 the Sicilian banker. He had a prosperous institu- 
 tion in which were deposited the earnings of many 
 ItaUans, poor and wealthy. Lupo's gang got after 
 him and demanded a large sum for "protection." But 
 Patti had a disinclination to give up, and refused. 
 At the time his refusal was attributed to high civic 
 ideals, and he was lauded as- a hero. Anyhow, he de- 
 fied the Mafia, laid in a stock of revolvers and rifles, 
 and rallied his friends around him. But the news got 
 abroad that Lupo was after Patti, and there was 
 a run on Patti's bank. It was a big run, and some of 
 the depositors gesticulated and threatened — ^for Patti 
 
244 THE MALA VITA IN AMERICA 
 
 couldn't pay it all out in a minute. Then there was 
 some kind of a row, and Patti and his friends (claim- 
 ing that the Mafia had arrived) opened fire, killing 
 one man and wounding others. The newspapers 
 praised Patti for a brave and stalwart citizen. May- 
 be he was. After the smoke had cleared away, how- 
 ever, he disappeared with all his depositors' money, 
 and now it has been discovered that the man he killed 
 was a depositor and not a Black Hander. The police 
 are still looking for him. 
 
 This case seems a fairly good illustration of the 
 endless opportimity for wrong-doing possible in a 
 state of society where extortion is permitted to ex- 
 ist — where the laws are not enforced — where there 
 is a " higher " sanction than the code. Whether Patti 
 was a good or a bad man, he might easily have kUled 
 an enemy in revenge and got off scot-free on the 
 mere claim that the other was blackmailing him; 
 just as an American in some parts of our country can 
 kill almost anybody and rely on being acquitted by 
 a jury, provided he is willing to swear that the de- 
 ceased had made improper advances to his wife. 
 
 The prevention of kidnapping, bomb-throwing, and 
 the other allied manifestations of the Black Hand 
 depends entirely upon the activity of the poHce — 
 p^iTticularly the Italian detectives, who should form 
 fln inevitable part of the force in eveiy large city. 
 The fact of the matter is that we never dreamed of a 
 real "Italian peril" (or, more accurately, a real "Si- 
 ciHan peril") until about the year 1900. Then we 
 woke up to what was going on — ^it had already gone 
 
THE MALA VITA IN AMERICA 245 
 
 a good way — and started in to put an end to it. 
 Petrosino did put an end to much of it, and at the 
 present time it is largely sporadic. Yet there will 
 always be a halo about the heads of the real Camor- 
 rists and Mafiusi — the Alfanos and the Rapis — in 
 the eyes of their simple-minded countrymen in the 
 United States. 
 
 Occasionally one of these big gans arrives at an 
 American port of entry, coming first-class via Havre 
 or Liverpool, having made his exit from Italy without 
 a passport. Then the Camorrists of New York and 
 Brooklyn get busy for a month or so, raising money 
 for the boys at home and knowing that they will 
 reap their reward if ever they go back. The popular 
 method of collecting is for the principal capo maestra, 
 or temporary boss of Mulberry Street, to "give" a 
 banquet at which all "friends" must be present — 
 at five dollars per head. No one cares to be conspic- 
 uous by reason of his absence, and the hero retimis 
 to Italy with a large-sized draft on Naples or Pal- 
 ermo. 
 
 Meanwhile the criminal driven out of his own 
 country has but to secure transportation to New 
 York to find himself in a rich field for his ac- 
 tivities; and once he has landed and observed the 
 demorahzation often existing from poHtical or other 
 reasons in our local forces of poHce and oxu- uncertain 
 methods of administering justice (particularly where 
 the defendant is a foreigner), he rapidly becomes 
 convinced that America is not only the country of 
 liberty but of license — ^to commit crime. 
 
246 THE MALA VITA IN AMERICA 
 
 Most Italian crooks come to the United States not 
 merely some time or other, but at intervals. Prac- 
 tically all of the Camorrist defendants on trial at 
 Viterbo have been in the UnitedStates, and all will 
 be here soon again, after their discharge, unless steps 
 are taken to keep them out. Luckily, it is a fact that 
 so much has been written in American newspapers 
 and periodicals in the past few years about the dan- 
 ger of the Black Hand and the criminals from south 
 Italy that the authorities on the other side have al- 
 lowed a rumor to be circulated that the climate of 
 South America is peculiarly adapted to persons whose 
 lungs have become weakened from confinement in 
 prison. In fact, at the present time more Italian 
 criminals seek asylum in the Argentine than in the 
 United States. Theoretically, of course, as no con- 
 vict can procure a passport, none of them leave Italy 
 at aU — ^but that is one of the humors of diplomacy. 
 The approved method among the continental coim- 
 tries of Europe of getting rid of their criminals is to 
 induce them to "move on." A lot of them keep 
 "moving on" untU they land in America. 
 
 Of course, the police should be able to cope with 
 the Black Hand problem, and, with a free use of Ital- 
 ian detectives who speak the dialects and know their 
 quarry, we may gradually, in the course of fifteen 
 years or so, see the entire disappearance of this 
 particular criminal phenomenon. But an oimce 
 of prevention is worth several tons of cure. Pet- 
 rosino claimed — ^not boastfully — ^that he could, with 
 proper deportation laws behind him, exterminate the 
 
THE MALA VITA IN AMERICA 247 
 
 Black Hand throughout the United States in three 
 months. 
 
 But, as far as the future is concerned, a solution of 
 the problem exists — a solution so simple that only a 
 statesman could explain why.it has not been adopted 
 long years ago. The statutes in force at EUis Island 
 permit the exclusion of immigrants who have been 
 guilty of crimes involving moral turpitude in their 
 native land, but do not provide for the compulsory 
 production of the applicants' "penal certificate" 
 under penalty of deportation. Every Italian emi- 
 grant is obliged to secure a certified document from 
 the police authorities of his native place, giving his 
 entire criminal record or showing that he has had 
 none, and without it he can not obtain a passport. 
 For several years efforts have been made to insert 
 in our immigration laws a provision that every immi- 
 grant from a country issuing such a certificate must 
 produce it before he can be sure of admission to the 
 United States. If this proposed law should be passed 
 by Congress the exclusion of Italian criminals would 
 be almost automatic. But if it or some similar pro- 
 vision fails to become law, it is not too much to say 
 that we may well anticipate a Camorra of some sort 
 in every locality in our coimtry having a large ItaHan 
 population. Yet government moves slowly, and ac- 
 tion halts while diplomacy sagely shakes its head 
 over the official cigarette, 
 
 A bill amending the present law to this effect has 
 received the enthusiastic approval of the immigra- 
 tion authorities and of the President. At first the 
 
248 THE MALA VITA IN AMERICA 
 
 Italian oflBcials here and abroad expressed themselves 
 as heartily in sympathy with this proposed addition 
 to the excluded classes; but, once the bUl was drawn 
 and submitted to Congress, some of these same offi- 
 cials entered violent protests against it, on the ground 
 that such a provision discriminated unfairly against 
 Italy and the other countries issuing such certifi- 
 cates. The result of this has been to delay all action 
 on the bill which is now being held in committee. 
 Meanwhile the Black Hander is arriving almost daily, 
 and we have no adequate laws to keep him out. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 Anxious for the actual facts, the writer asked an Italian 
 friend to secure an interview with Cavalier Tarantelli, Questor 
 of Florence, who for a long time was a functionary of the Pub- 
 lic Safety in Naples, and testified in this capacity, at Viterbo, 
 on August 9, 1911. In discussing the power of the Ca- 
 morra, the Questor, after having given it as his opinion that 
 the actual criminal organization had lost most of its unity, 
 said: "At present there exist what are called ' combricole di 
 quartiere' (conventicles of the quarters) small secret associations 
 of ' camorristi ' belonging to the same quarter of Naples. Nat- 
 urally the different combricole in the different quarters of Na- 
 ples assist each other, as likewise do the different chiefs of the 
 quarters. Perhaps there is still a kind of hierarchy among 
 the chiefs as there may still exist a hierarchy among the 'ca- 
 morristi' in the different quarters. These 'camorristi' are, 
 as a rule, bad characters, whose chief characteristics are im- 
 morality and overbearing insolence, and who live accordingly. 
 They impose upon women and get money out of them; they 
 practice usury; they receive and hide stolen things. Naples 
 has now a special and intense criminahty. The 'camorristi' 
 are at present almost all habitual criminals. But the real so- 
 called 'act of camorra' {atto d'camorra) is extortion, namely, 
 a price imposed upon those who fear individual or collective 
 imposition, eitjaer occult or open, on the part of the 'Ca- 
 morra.' Every morning a 'camorrista' will go to the shop- 
 keepers and tradesmen of the quarter (quartiere) and collect 
 the price paid by him to be let alone. There areinstances 
 even nowadays of people who go to the chief 'camorrista' 
 of their quarter in order to have their persons and property 
 protected. This protection, however, is now more apparent 
 than real. For instance, it is much more difficult now than it 
 was formerly to find people who try to recover stolen property 
 
 251 
 
252 APPENDIX 
 
 by having recourse to the ' Camorra ' rather than to the police. 
 The 'camorristi' are extremely numerous in Naples; at 
 funeral processions, for example, you may see thousands of 
 them. Songs are sung beneath the windows of prisons by the 
 friends and relatives of the prisoners as a means of communi- 
 cating with the latter. But this custom of 'the songs' is now 
 disappearing and the same may be said of the ' dichiaramenti' 
 (kinds of challenges), and of the tribunal of the 'Camorra.' 
 Some large meetings of 'camorristi' still take place now and 
 then. They will meet in some deserted place in the country 
 far away from the city or among the mountains. I shall not 
 deny that the judiciary of Naples is somewhat different from 
 that of Northern Italy. The former is sometimes exceedingly 
 indulgent, perhaps corrupt; that will explain the influence of 
 the 'Camorra.' It is no exaggeration to state that magis- 
 trates in Naples are at times in awe of the ' camorristi, ' and 
 especially of their friends who always appear as perfectly 
 honorable persons. It is a fact that the police now endeavor 
 to destroy the ' Camorra,' a thing which they would not even 
 have dreamt of a few years ago, and we must not forget that 
 the police consist for the most part of men from the South 
 of Italy. That there are oflScials and agents taking bribes 
 from secret associations for delinquency is well known, but, 
 of course, that does not occur in Naples or in Italy alone. 
 In Naples the 'Camorra' places itself at the disposal of those 
 who pay it, even in the case of elections. As a rule, it is the 
 candidates of the conservative parties who avail themselves of 
 the 'Camorra.' Thus, you see, even ministers and prefects 
 may avail themselves of it! At all events, these deplorable 
 facts are becoming less and less frequent. Let us hope they 
 may completely disappear! To the Socialist party, however, 
 must be given the credit of fighting against the 'Camorra' to 
 the best of its ability." 
 
 This is an extraordinary admission for a public functionary 
 to make, and it is only fair to the Questor to state that his 
 interview was not made intentionally for publication. It is 
 what would be called in law an "admission against interest" 
 and is evidence of the weightiest character. One can read 
 between the lines that he but hints at the real state of things. 
 
APPENDIX 253 
 
 His opinion that the solidarity of the Camorra has been greatly 
 weakened seems to be borne out by many other evidences. 
 For example, the depositions of the informer Abattemaggio 
 are filled with detailed accounts of how various local "camor- 
 risti" quarrelled over the division of their petty spoils, tricked 
 and cheated one another, and often betrayed each other to 
 the police. The day of the real camorrista, — he of the swift 
 dagger, the man of " heart," — seems to be over and to have 
 given place to an era of filthy traders in vice, petty grafters, 
 blackmailers, and cheap thieves. But popular imagination 
 still surrounds these with the halo of romance and regards the 
 Camorra as " the friend of the people." 
 

 Date 
 
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 4UIESUI 
 
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 Library Bureau Cat. No. 1137 
 
HV 6789 T76 
 
 fji&ijthor Vol 
 
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 Title Copy ' 
 
 Cou ts, criminals and Camoora 
 
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