








DANGER!

_A TRUE HISTORY OF A GREAT CITY'S_

WILES AND TEMPTATIONS

_THE VEIL LIFTED, AND LIGHT THROWN ON_

CRIME AND ITS CAUSES,

_AND_

CRIMINALS AND THEIR HAUNTS.

_FACTS AND DISCLOSURES_

BY

HOWE & HUMMEL.

BUFFALO:
THE COURIER COMPANY, PRINTERS.
1886


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PREFACE.

It may not be amiss to remark, in explanation of the startling and
sensational title chosen for this production, that logic has not yet
succeeded in framing a title-page which shall clearly indicate the
nature of a book. The greatest adepts have frequently taken refuge in
some fortuitous word, which has served their purpose better than the
best results of their analysis. So it was in the present case. "DANGER!"
is a thrilling and warning word, suggestive of the locomotive headlight,
and especially applicable to the subject matter of the following pages,
in which the crimes of a great city are dissected and exposed from the
arcanum or confessional of what we may be pardoned for designating the
best-known criminal law offices in America.

So much for the title. A few words as to the _motif_ of the publication.
Despite the efficiency of our police and the activity of our many
admirable reforming and reclaiming systems, crime still abounds, while
the great tide of social impurity continues to roll on with unabated
velocity. Optimists and philanthropic dreamers in every age have
pictured in glowing colors the gradual but sure approach of the
millennium, yet we are, apparently, still as far from that elysium of
purity and unselfishness as ever. Whenever the wolf and the lamb lie
down together, the innocent bleater is invariably inside the other's
ravenous maw. There may be--and we have reason to know that there is--a
marked diminution in certain forms of crime, but there are others in
which surprising fertility of resource and ingenuity of method but too
plainly evince that the latest developments of science and skill are
being successfully pressed into the service of the modern criminal.
Increase of education and scientific skill not only confers superior
facilities for the successful perpetration of crime, but also for its
concealment. The revelations of the newspapers, from week to week, but
too plainly indicate an undercurrent of vice and iniquity, whose depth
and foulness defy all computation.

We are not in accord with those pessimists who speak of New York as a
boiling caldron of crime, without any redeeming features or hopeful
elements. But our practice in the courts and our association with
criminals of every kind, and the knowledge consequently gained of their
history and antecedents, have demonstrated that, in a great city like
New York, the germs of evil in human life are developed into the rankest
maturity. As the eloquent Dr. Guthrie