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A Pickpocket's Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York

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You probably never heard of George Appo, although he wrote an autobiography. He was a reformed and washed-out criminal by the time he told his story in the early twentieth century, and although he got through 99 typewritten pages, it must have been tough for him. He had never gone to school, and his limited reading and writing skills were whatever he could pick up from fellow convicts in prison. When Timothy J. Gilfoyle, a historian at Loyola University in Chicago, found the unpublished memoir in the archives of the Society for the Prevention of Crime in New York, he must have realized that Appo's story had lain unpublished because there wasn't much of a market for its mass of run-on sentences (it only has thirteen paragraphs) and spans of inarticulateness. Still, it was in some ways an epic story of eventual success in life, but it was far to dark to be the sort that Horatio Alger might have penned. Appo had been a child criminal, a prisoner in some famous nineteenth century jails, a pickpocket and confidence man, an opium addict, a celebrity, and a quietly reformed charity case and employee of the Society for the Prevention of Crime. Gilfoyle has taken Appo's narrative, quoting from it extensively, and expanded upon its many facets to produce _A Pickpocket's Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York_ (Norton), a detailed history of Appo, the social and geographical locales in which he worked, and of the many famous, infamous, and unknown people he brushed up against.

Appo grew up on the streets, selling papers and learning to pick pockets. New York in the nineteenth century was just the place for a pickpocket to make a living. There were plenty of crowds, and people crowded into streetcars where jostling was taken for granted. Appo was tough, but his toughness extended to his being able to take punishment from other criminals or from legal authorities, not in physically harming his victims. He worked in the realm of crooks who thought themselves "good fellows": they worked carefully, with dexterity and guile rather than muscle; they spent lavishly on themselves and their cronies, and they never squealed, even when wronged. There was truly some honor among these thieves. Appo generally made a good living, but with thousands of pickpocketing attempts, he was going to be caught some of the time. Much of Gilfoyle's history tells about his many and varied incarcerations, within the reform school ship _Mercury_, the Egyptian-style Tombs prison in New York City, and Sing Sing, the prototype for making industrial laborers of convicts, who suffered from filthy conditions, overcrowding, and torture from stupid and untrained guards. Appo rightly charged that it drove prisoners to insanity, death, and suicide. He graduated from pickpocketing to bunco schemes, but eventually testified to a government committee not against his fellow "bunco steerers", but about the schemes in general and especially the complicity of the police that allowed it to continue unhindered.

His testimony before the committee was his turn to go straight. Appo also had served as an opium den guide to Dr. Henry Kane who did the first medical investigation of the effects of opium addiction. In 1895 he went on the stage, playing himself in the melodrama _In the Tenderloin_, a play that portrayed criminals as something more complicated than simple bad guys. By the time of his release from his last imprisonment, his "underworld universe no longer existed". Those who had organized on a national scale the green-goods game had all been rounded up, and the customary support from venal policemen was giving way to the first of the police reform movements. Appo underwent a religious conversion (though one has to wonder whether this was merely the only career move he could make as an older criminal whose world had moved on without him), but evangelical reformers gave him only half-hearted support, and seemed to believe that he like all criminals was beyond real reform. For a while he worked at $6 a month as an undercover agent for the Society for the Prevention of Crime. He died of old age in 1930, at age 71, not a hero, not an urban Jesse James, "neither a latter-day Robin Hood nor a Jack the Ripper", just an ordinary guy compelled to specific crimes because of specific social conditions. It's a great life story, and Gilfoyle has used his skills as a historian and storyteller upon its episodes to give fascinating histories and essays about penal institutions, social philosophy, and criminal styles of the time.

George Appo's own previously unpublished biography is interwoven into Gilfoyle's outstanding book and tells readers first hand what life was like in the "new" Sing Sing prison, the infamous Tombs - NYC's massive city jail, and of course the newly created institutions for the criminally insane in the late 1800's.

Appo survived on the streets like thousands of boys from Five Points and eventually learned to read and write in prison - fortunately for today's readers. George's gentle nature and philisophical view of his life and his situation is very apparent in his writing, but contradicts the sum of his experiences as a prolific pickpocket and con man.

The combination of the author's well researched presentation along with Appo's humble first hand account of his life is fascinating. A special opportunity for a glimpse into a wild and exciting era not really that long ago.

You will enjoy this book.

A Pickpocket's Tale is a close, intimate look inside of New York's underworld in the nineteenth century. Ostensibly about one criminal, the half Chinese, half Irish George Appo, the book is more a sociological work about the institutions of crime and punishment as they existed then.

Born in poverty in 1856 (or -8), Appo began as a newspaper boy, then graduated to the career of pickpocket. He served time in all kinds of detention centers, from Sing Sing to Eastern State Pen in Philadelphia, to a stint on Blackwell's (now Roosevelt) Island, to a short period in the Matteawan Hospital. The book gives its reader an in-depth look at everything from street crime in the Five Points district up to Appo's short-lived careers in acting and law enforcement.

Appo was an obscure figure who was given a one-sentence mention in Herbert Asbury's The Gangs of New York, but Appo really was an archetype of his time and situation. What was amazing to me was that, even though he was nearly illiterate for a long period and never went to a day of school in his life, he still managed to write a memoir of his extraordinary life. In all I thought this was an excellent book about the crime life of New York City in the nineteenth century and is better perhaps even than Herbert Asbury's classic book.

Review of A Pickpocket's Tale The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York by Timothy J. Gilfoyle copyright 2006, W.W. Norton & Co.

The inspiration and guiding text for this book came from the autobiography of one George Washington Appo, a 19 century New Yorker of mixed blood who started his criminal career as a pickpocket, but progressed as he got older and (somewhat) wiser to various forms of what is now known as "white collar crime", non-violent financial fraud.

Appo's story, as written by himself, at the behest of a Protestant organization as a cautionary tale intended to exhort others to avoid a life of crime, is only about 100 pages long; the majority of the book Gilfoyle wrote around it is commentary, supporting data, and historical notation explaining the specifics of 19th century crime and punishment, describing relevant penal institutions and laws as they existed then, and confirming various places and events in the original narrative. Gilfoyle does a splendid job of explaining the conditions, social phenomena, and personages Appo encountered during his long and varied life, extracting a sociological snapshot out of a first-person crime narrative, the original of which is in a library of Columbia University.

Contemporary with Appo's criminal career is the emergence of NYC's Chinatown, the spread of opium use in the NY area from Chinese immigrants to non-Chinese people, the rise of journalistic exposes (Appo was part of one describing brutal prison conditions), quasi-governmental fact-finding enterprises (Appo was directly involved with the first medical research on opium smoking), and governmentally-driven anti-corruption and reforming operations (Appo justified his cooperation with a congressional committee to investigate white collar crime and corruption in law enforcement as a means of protecting his fellow white collar criminals from the depredations of corrupt and abusive law enforcement officials. Attempts on his life were made by other crooks who failed to see the big picture the same way he did).

Gilfoyle also does a very good job of showing that racial categories, at least in the case of those with mixed blood like Appo, were perhaps more mutable in the 19th century than those of our time tend to think. Gilfoyle has included descriptions of Appo's appearance in his part of the narrative as well as having skillfully selected a number of 19th century illustrations depicting Appo at various times and roles in his life: some show him with exaggerated Chinese features, some show him closer in appearance to one with Caucasian features.
Appo himself seemed to switch between the two racial identifications given him by society by virtue of having had an Irish mother and a Chinese father: he describes an attempt to "go straight" after one of his incarcerations by starting a business with capital from a prominent Chinese resident in Chinatown, who later did him out of the honest livelihood in favor of placing a fellow "Chinese" in the business. He later wrote about having frequented an opium den on Mott Street which was one of the first meant for non-Chinese customers, and later in the narrative, he describes having gone to other opium dens "of a better class", further uptown also meant for the non-Chinese, the opium dens having spread as opium use spread among the Caucasian population.

Though the world Appo describes of widespread corruption and criminal activity co-existing with Victorian notions of propriety in personal conduct and relations between the sexes is perhaps an alien one to many modern readers, and some of the swindles engaged in by Appo and his contemporaries just wouldn't work in today's legal and social environment, some common themes with today's criminals and crime environment emerge in his description of his criminal career:
Appo describes the phenomena of power over others corrupting prison administrators long before Stanley Milgram's famous Prison Experiment, and Gilfoyle's research on the everyday life of Sing Sing's inmates and the rapid turnover and politically determined selection of prison employees describes a state of affairs which even in our more modern and regulated age continues to lend itself to contraband in prisons, and prisoner abuse by correctional personnel.

"By his third entry to Sing Sing, Appo was also cognizant of the prison aristocracy of `privileged convicts,' the foundation of an informal but well-organized convict economy. Inmates with money procured easy positions and special privileges. Upon arrival, for example, prisoners were directly questioned about their ability to "put up" ---to bribe guards and keepers for various privileges. ...The easy availability of contraband, the prominence of an internal inmate economy controlled by private contractors and privileged inmates, and the absence of any prison wall around Sing Sing before 1876 contrast sharply with recent claims by historians that the nineteenth-century penitentiary was a distinctive "sealed-off" space, isolated from the larger world outside its walls."...Sing Sing keepers were described as originating from `the lowest walks of life'. In 1868 a former keeper claimed that two-thirds of his co-workers drank while on duty. Furthermore guards and keepers were poorly trained. For example, they received no written instructions on assuming their positions. Keeper Zalmon Smith admitted his training was so inadequate that the most informative instructions came from the convicts." (Gilfoyle, 2006, A Pickpocket's Tale, pp. 160-161.)

The private contractors referred to above were responsible for work programs for prisoners, dependent on "sweet deals" between private businesses and prison administrations for cheap convict labor in a way similar to the setup of "workfare" programs today but though they sometimes gave convicts the opportunity to acquire job skills (hat-making was one of the skilled trades at which prisoners in Sing Sing had the opportunity to work), ex-cons found that trying to get legitimate employment on the outside with the vocational skills learned in the prison workshop was difficult, if not, as in Appo's case, impossible.

"Like his previous efforts to go straight---setting up an express business with Tom Lee, applying for work in hat factories, asking Elisha Harris of the Prison Association for assistance, acting in a George Lederer production, traveling with the Derby Mascot Theater company in Montreal---Appo's employment proved short-lived and insecure. In each case Appo's return to pocket picking, flimflam, or green goods was a reaction to failing to secure stable work. ...The personal connections offering the most prospects to Appo and other former convicts remained those associated with the underworld. For that reason, Appo admitted, "I and the other men always returned to a life of a crook as soon as discharged."" (Gilfoyle, 2006, p. 308.)

Appo had made an extraordinary attempt during his lifetime to tell his own story: besides having written the autobiography and given lectures and interviews about his experiences with the penal system and the life of a career criminal, provided information for newspaper articles about brutal prison conditions following his first sentence in Sing Sing, and testifying for the Lexow Committee, Appo actually appeared on stage as a participant in the 19th century equivalent of a reality show or a true crime drama, a touring theatrical production with crime in the storyline, and more than one actual criminal playing a part on stage that aped and exaggerated the one they played in real life.
Though he attained some evanescent fame, however, he got scant profit from his stage career: he had been promised $150 at the end of a tour, he was only given $5, for which he naiively signed a receipt. Other actors informed him after the fact that producers were bigger crooks than he was.

A Pickpocket's Tale gives the reader a glimpse into the criminal underworld of the mid19th century from the perspective of someone that made their living within it. This is no easy task for the author because sub-altern populations rarely leave very good written records of their activities and the official records tend to be more quantitative and do not provide a lot details on individuals. The autobiography of the life and times of George Appo gives a unique glimpse into this world and the author uses his account of his life and times as a tour of the criminal world.
George Appo's life is especially well documented and the author does a good job of using events in his life and the larger record of crime in New York and other northeastern urban centers. Appo's life is a good illustration of how many criminal enterprises transcended ethnic and class lines and was even a part of so called respectable society. The author also does a good job of showing the class based nature of law enforcement by contrasting Appo's with that of criminals with more money and connections.
Another interesting part of the book is the sense of community and respect among the criminals. While it is far from mutual aid society, there is defiantly a code of honor amongst the denizens of the underworld and Appo gives clear demonstration of this when he relates how he is both helped and helps his fellow criminals and when he refuses to tell the police a even when he is ripped off. Having already read a few books on the history of crime in at the turn of the 19th century I believe that this book is an excellent addition to the genera and would recommend to anyone interested in the subject.

It's an excellent book, highly recommended for not only the biographical aspects, but also for it's extensive look into urban crime, justice and incarceration during the second half of the 19th century. It's not a lighthearted crime story but a serious yet still very readable scholarly work. Extensive notes and references are included and also many interesting illustrations.

George Appo lived a fascinating and revealing life - one that touched on Chinese immigration and the California Gold Rush (his father), Irish immigration (his mother), criminal activity in New York's notorious Five Points neighborhood, the very beginning of the opium culture in the U.S., political corruption and reform, the Broadway stage, as well as major upheavals in how America thought about medicine, psychiatry, and prisons. In "A Pickpocket's Tale," Timothy J. Gilfoyle uses lengthy exceprts from Appo's previously unpublished autobiography as a narrative structure and launching point for his own interesting and informative excursions into all of these topics. The result is a thoroughly enjoyable, and educational, portrait of a pivotal time in America's country.

i like late 19th century stuff, and i have a thing for reading about criminals. but this was soooooooo dry. i didn't finish it. i couldn't. it was like reading one of the most boring history texts ever assigned. i was hoping it would be more of a "fictiony" read like The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America was. but, no. i would like to learn about 19th century new york criminals, but not from this book.

A look at the late 19th century New York that seems more like the lawless Wild West than I would have expected with many problems including: illiteracy; poor sanitation; crooked police and politicians; dismal prisons; and opium addiction.

I first saw this book featured in the book section of THE WEEK magazine. So I picked it up to know more about the scams of the day and the criminal underworld protocals as well. But my ulterior motive was to examine how the coming gilded age of corporate power was reflected in the underground economy and how justice and prisons were being affected. It is a window of the past that looks into todays corporate influence in our current systems, and how they are being corrupted. It is worth the price of the book to find that the times and modus operandi have really not changed. The power that moneyed interest bring to bear on public institutions is an ever evolving process that needs to be checked by the people, NOT by the market!
Still it is George Appo who comes onto the stage at a time when organized crime was getting its engine in gear and revving up for the roaring twenties. A culture personified by Appo. The others made the money, and Appo did the time. Appo took the rap, but never ratted out. He carried the culture up to a man of honor. One of the few who walked the walk/ and didn't talk.