The New York Tombs Inside and Out! Scenes and Reminiscences Coming Down to the Present. A Story Stranger Than Fiction, with an Historic Account of America's Most Famous Prison.

A modern Prison Barracks—Personal Experiences—Amazing stories of corruption—Ruth Howard’s bomb—Charges pigeon-holed—Commissioner Hynes’ Administration—Bissert in clover—Drunken...

The Collect Pond of three generations ago—King William’s Experience—Agitation to fill up—How it came to be called the Tombs—Size of the old Tombs—Retrospect—The New Tombs—When O...

The remarkable confessions of one of the brightest, brainiest and smartest crooks of his day. How He Pardoned Himself Out of Prison Admits total depravity—His prayer—Serving tim...

A New England ancestry—An indulgent mother—Idleness and bad company—The feelings of a guilty conscience—Work or crime, which?—State prison—Liberty—Again arrested—A new career in...

The study of human nature—Deception of the looks—Chronic liars—A deserter from Russia—Chump of Harlem—Many dark records—Four years for telling a lie—Capt. Jack—Crooked Kahn—The...

Popular demand to abolish the Grand Jury—Judges ask for legal indictments—Too rapid work in Grand Jury room—The weakness of the system—Rich men on the Grand Jury—Under the contr...

The cause of temptations—Reasons for children in crime—Evil resorts—Conversations with child criminals—The German boy—The Children’s Court—Its origin—Crime among poor children t...

A recent ruling on corporal punishment—Favored by best prison reformers—Horace Mann—School Principals and teachers—Supt. Brockway—What they do in England and Germany—Rights of p...

Causes of crime among women—Reasons for moral leprosy—The Cadet system—How carried on—Examples—The celestials of Chinatown—Women of the Tombs—Mother Mandelbaum—Queen Bertha—A be...

A great omission—Poverty and social conditions the cause of crime—The unemployed—Hungry children—Poverty homes and crime—What ex-convicts say—Hungry men commit crime to be sent...

Startling facts—Save young men—The way of the transgressor—How young men go down—Example—Percentage of young men—Opinion of Supt. Brockway—Generators of crime—Fast living—Exampl...

Prevention better than cure—An experienced Superintendent—Politics the curse of the Department—The Lexow investigations—The single-headed Commissioner—Present standing of the Po...

The Detective Bureau—Early heads—Modern methods—Crime as a science—The Dewey parade—Detectives in disguise—Old world methods—Scotland Yard and French methods—The work of the sto...

The Gallery—Measurement of crooks—Clippings—Up to date records—Arrests last year—Curiosities of crime—Mugging crooks—The third degree, what is it—Inspector Byrnes and Jake Sharp...

Noted criminal trials—Catering to depraved tastes—Some great trials—Legal loopholes—Beating the case—Many trials a farce—Swift justice for criminals—Homicide trials—Lax conditio...

The new Constitution—Abolition of the Oyer and Terminer—An exclusively criminal court—The highest Court in the State—Criminal branch of the Supreme Court in session nine months—...

The sorting Criminal Bureau—How crooks are gathered in the pens—The Magistrates’ Court—The shyster and ward heeler—The power of a pull—Examples—Mike Maguire—The drunks—Sunday mo...

A hard question—Changing character—Cure for crime—Brooding over the past—Born crooks—Lines of circumvallation—Efforts made to reform—Evolution of prison reform—Needed reforms to...

Personal observations of the effect of strong drink—Close the saloons and you will close the prisons—Moral supineness—A New York expert on murders—The Medical News—Empty jails i...

The phrase originally given to only two missionary workers—How Mrs. Schaffner became a Tombs Angel—Her work as a missionary—The second Tombs Angel, Mrs. John A. Forster—A night...

From Tombs to State Prison—English system—Received in prison—Initiation, classification and shops—A prison reformer—What he has done to improve the prisoner’s lot—A new discipli...

What shall be done with our tramps?—Organize a colony—How graded—Working on business principles—The cost of such an undertaking—What the French do—Habitual criminals and misdeme...

A staggering question—Rikers Prison—A national waste—Careful study of the cost of crime—Crime on the increase—Direct expenditures—Indirect expenditures—Tables showing how money...

The bane of our municipal government—New York’s prosperity—What it cost to run the city—Assessments and commissions—Ancient and modern grafters—Police graft—Fortunes for the few...

No prison on the American continent has had such an unsavory reputation as a corrupt grafting institution as the New York Tombs. This has been especially true when City politics...

For more than two centuries after the arrival of the early Dutch settlers on Manhattan Island the land for a considerable distance on all sides of the present Tombs prison was a...

Modern penologists tell us that a large number of our present day law breakers possess criminal instincts and in a sense are not entirely responsible for the unlawful deeds they...

Since the close of the Civil War, crime of every kind has made enormous strides, not only in our large cities but also in our sparsely populated districts. Various reasons have...

There can be little doubt that the criminal product of the twentieth century is vastly different in its make up and harder to deal with than the criminal of any other century of...

During its long and eventful history the Tombs has had many notable prisoners. It would be impossible in this brief sketch to do justice to this subject by giving a full and det...

One of our modern fallacies is that education is a cure for all the ails and weaknesses of life. There never was a greater mistake. When we think of humanity in its deranged and...

“Naturally I shrink from publishing my sins to the world. I prefer speaking of the shortcomings of others. Like most of the human family I can see the mote in my brother’s eye,...

The writer of the following sketch received a sentence of twenty-three years imprisonment. He is a bright and brainy criminal. It is the general opinion that had he used his tal...

What a field for the study of human nature the careful observer finds in the Tombs Prison! I do not know of any other place on this continent where such a display of types may b...

Authorities agree that forgery is a crime of the highest order, that needs patience, a cool head and the skill of a genius. At the present day it requires several persons to car...

There has been a growing feeling on the part of judges, lawyers and others who are directly concerned in the practice of law in our criminal Courts, not only in this county, but...

Crime, like many of the diseases that afflict the human body, is both infectious and contagious, and criminal principles can be taught to old and young as easy as the alphabet o...

The dense population of the lower parts of the city, the narrow streets, the ubiquitous gin mill and the dirty tenements all combine to make New York the centre of the most acce...

A recent ruling of one of our city judges, after reprimanding two lads brought before him for a trivial offence, decided that they should be birched in “the good old way” prescr...

The two great causes of crime among girls and women in general are immorality and strong drink. Many others might be enumerated, but that would be entirely unnecessary. Nor is i...

Many of our most recent sociological writers commenting on some of the causes of crime, omit all mention of poverty. They speak of heredity, environment, intemperance, and many...

One of the most startling facts that face the present day reformer is the great number of strong, healthy and well educated young men that really break into prison, as that is t...

This is a practical age, and the people demand of their servants, the Police, practical up-to-date methods in the prevention and suppression of crime, and no matter what other v...

The main spoke in the wheel at the Central Office is the Detective Bureau. Less than sixty years ago this branch of the service was organized as a separate and independent Bureau.

One of the most interesting departments of the Detective Bureau is the Rogues’ Gallery. This branch contains the records of nearly a hundred thousand criminals. It is only withi...

For over sixty years the people of New York have been afflicted with mercenary bands of lawless thieves and hoodlums who are known to the authorities as “Gangs.” The only justif...

Almost every year, New York witnesses a noted criminal trial, which frequently becomes a sensation in the community. For weeks beforehand the newspapers give an excruciating acc...

When on January 1st, 1896, the present Constitution of the State of New York took effect, there went out of existence the Court of Oyer and Terminer—a court whose quaint name ac...

As is well known, the Police Court is the sorting Criminal Bureau of the city, where the murderer, highwayman, thief and burglar come to be classified. It is here that the crimi...

Within recent years there seems to be a bad odor in all of our Criminal Courts because of the sharp practices carried out by the “shyster” and “harpies” of the law. Most of thes...

What brilliant minds are sometimes confined within prison walls! And how they work and fret and stew from morning till night and frequently from night till morning in an effort...

The Tombs Prison is in the nature of a detention barracks, where persons awaiting trial are kept for a season, and where one-half are discharged for lack of evidence and other l...

This is a hard question to answer, although it has been asked extensively down through the ages. The answer will turn mainly on what you mean by reform. It is interesting to kno...

From actual observation as a Prison Chaplain, and a careful study of this subject extending over several years, together with repeated interrogations and conversations with thou...

To a score at least of ladies of every nationality, creed and culture was the term Tombs Angel given the past seventy years. But out of this number only two ladies by their good...

Marriages have been performed in the Tombs Prison since it was first opened in 1838, by clergymen of all denominations, Protestant, Catholic and Jewish, without the least object...

After a person has been convicted of a felony in New York County, either in the Criminal Branch of the Supreme Court, or in the Court of General Sessions, if the sentence is a y...

Friday has always been known as hanging day at the Tombs. It was the day set apart from time immemorial and the New World continued it in deference to Old World customs. Friday...

The visit in question was at the request of an inmate in whom I was deeply interested, and who was finally awarded a new trial by the Court of Appeals.

Every year our City Magistrates send to the Workhouse on Blackwell’s Island no less than twenty thousand persons. This is entirely independent of the number sent from Kings Coun...

The cost of crime in the city of New York is a question of such vast importance to the taxpayers as to seem bewildering. It is a most difficult thing to follow crime into its va...

We have had our stone age, our iron age and our steel age, now we have our graft age. This is the age of the political highwayman who makes the city and her people pay him tribu...