A Rare Book's Roll-Call of Dishonest, Immoral, and Unusual People

by Stephen J. Gertz

In 1813, James Caulfield published a new, expanded, three-volume edition of his  Portraits, Memoirs, and Characters, of Remarkable Persons, From the Reign of Edward the Third, to the Revolution, containing 109 engraved plates and 292 pages of accompanying text,  finishing the work originally issued in two volumes 1794-1795 with sixty plates and 214 pages of biographical material.

Caulfield's purpose was to embellish with prints the "twelfth class" section found in James Granger's Biographical History of England, from Egbert the Great to the Revolution, consisting of Characters dispersed in different Classes (2 vols., 1769), the "twelfth class" being those ‘such as lived to a great age, deformed persons, convicts, &c.’

It is, in short, an illustrated rogue's gallery of the odd, the dubious, the notorious, the eccentric, and the disreputable including:

Mother Damnable, the epitome of ugliness and the cursing, scolding, fuming, fire-flinging shrew not to confused with Mother Louse;

 

Blash De Manfre, the human Trevi Fountain commonly called the Water Spouter, who earned fame for drinking water in large quantities and regurgitating it as various sorts of wine, simple waters, beer, oil, and milk;

Elynour Rummin, the famous Ale-Wife of England, with "nose some deal hooked, and curiously crooked, never stopping but ever dropping; her skin loose and slacke, grain'd like a sacke, with a crooked back," but whose ale was renowned as A-1;

Margaret Vergh Gryifith, who had a six-inch horn protruding from her forehead;

Mrs. Mary Davis, who one-upped Margaret Vergh Gryifith with two horns growing on her head that would shed and grow again;

Francis Battaglia, alas not known as "Frankie Batts," who would devour half a peck of stones within 24-hours and six days later excrete them as sand through a colon with true grit;

John Clavell, the gentleman highwayman who wrote elegant poetry that begged mercy from judges, nobles,  and King, and was the author of A Recantation of an ill-led Life: Or, a discovery of the Highway Law (1627);

Archibald "Archie" Armstrong, the sharp-tongued master of buffoonery while jester to James I and Charles I, who earned renown and fortune as a Jacobean wise-acre, retired and became a loan-shark, and wrote A Banquet of Jeasts. Or Change of cheare: Being a collection of moderne jests. Witty ieeres. Pleasant taunts. Merry tales (1630);

Ann Turner, "a gentlewoman that from her youth had been given over to a loose kind of life, of low stature, fair visage, for outward behavior comely, but in prodigality and excess riotous," and was executed for murder;  

 Innocent Nat Witt, a poor, harmless idiot;

Moll Cut-Purse, "a woman of a masculine spirit and make [who] practised or was instrumental to almost every crime and frolick;"

Roger Crab, the sack-cloth wearing vegan hermit;

Mary Aubrey, who murdered her abusive husband then chopped him to pieces and cast him thither and yon;

Robert Fielding, gambler, bigamist, suspected murderer, and the vainest of all fops; 

Augustine Barbara Venbek, aka Barbara Urselin, whose "whole body and even her face was covered with curled hair of yellow color and very soft like wool";

Mary Carleton, who used more aliases than any knave in the Kingdom, was married three times, robbed and cheated several people, was often taken to be a German princess or at least a woman of quality, and was tried for bigamy and acquitted;

Mull'd-Sack, b. John Cottington, the genius pickpocket and miscreant who, one night while drunk, accidentally married an hermaphrodite named Aniseed-Water Robin (credited with twice impregnating himself and giving birth to a boy and a girl) in Fleet prison, "the common place for joining all rogues and whores together"; and many more.

James Caulfield (1764–1826) was an author and printseller. "Many old English portrait prints were too rare and valuable to supply the extraordinarily large demand for them. To this end, many old plates were republished and many old prints were copied. Caulfield came to specialize in prints illustrating Granger's twelfth class of people—‘such as lived to a great age, deformed persons, convicts, &c.’—whose portraits were very often the hardest to come by. In 1788 he began his work Portraits, Memoirs, and Characters of Remarkable Persons, a series of reproductions of old portrait paintings and copies of rare old or popular prints accompanied by letterpress biographies" (Oxford DNB).

(In a bibliographical aside, Granger's book made fashionable the practice of extra-illustrating historical or topological books, i.e. pasting in illustrations from other sources, which became known as "grangerizing" existing texts).

In 1819 Caulfield further extended his book to include Portraits, Memoirs, and Characters, of Remarkable Persons, from the Revolution in 1688 to the end of the Reign of George II.

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CAULFIELD, James. Portraits, Memoirs, and Characters, of Remarkable Persons, From the Reign of Edward the Third, to the Revolution. Collected From the Most Authentic Accounts Extant. A New Edition, Completing the Twelfth Class of Granger's Biographical History of England; With Many Additional Rare Portraits. London: Printed for R.S. Kirby, 1813.

New edition, expanded and completing the original two volumes 1794-95. Three tall octavo volumes (10 x 5 7/8 in; 254 x 149 mm). viii, 104; [2], [105]-198; [2], [201]-292 pp. 109 engraved plates (one folding), including engravings based upon the drawings of Marcellus Laroon (1653-1702). Publisher's original blue paper covered boards with white printed spine labels

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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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Book Heisters & Gangbusters: The Notorious Rare Book Thieves of New York And Their Nemesis

by Stephen J. Gertz

There was Babyface Mahoney, who made the libraries of New England his playground; the Swede; Harry Gold, whose scouts were not Baden-Powell boys yet still tied the cops into knots; "Doctor" Harold Clarke, whose Ph.D was in larceny and logorrhea; the Southerner Dupree, who'd steal almost anything; the thief known only as Paul, a nimble lifter who could jump through a library window with the loot if need be; Ben Harris, the Dane who sold illegal erotica, was savvy, fearless, and knew the score. There was Jack Brocher, who hijacked Connecticut, tipped it over, and poured its rare books into New York; Oscar the fence Chudnowsky; the shadowy master thief known as Hilderwald, Hilderman, or Hilderbrand, a literary tourist on the wrong path who checked into the Library of Congress and checked out with rarities purloined as if they were hotel toiletries and towels; and more members of the crew, desperado biblioklepts all.

And then there was Charles Romm, who, with fire hydrant physique and the face and temperament of Al Capone, led this gang responsible for a five year tsunami of rare book thievery at Columbia University Library, Harvard Library, the New York Public Library, Boston Public Library, and almost every other public and private library in the Northeast, the many small town libraries easy pickin's. The books were scoured of obvious ID and then made their way to Book Row on New York City's Fourth Avenue, six long city blocks lined with the greatest concentration of secondhand book shops in the world. From Book Row the literary swag went up the food chain onto the shelves or into the back rooms of upscale rare and antiquarian booksellers in uptown Manhattan who weren't too picky about provenance, looked the other way, or were duped. The years 1926-1931 were open season for book hunters of dubious character stealing and/or dealing in hot rare books.

But G. William Bergquist, Special Investigator for the NYPL with a bloodhound nose and terrier disposition, was on their trail.

The beginning of the end for the outfit began with a copy of Poe's scarce Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems (1829). On Saturday, January, 10, 1931 Harry Gold sent the Southerner Dupree to the NYPL to steal the library's precious copy with the Swede and Paul as back-up in case Dupree, on his first caper, got the willies. That he did but managed to make a mad dash for the exit without slipping on the sweat flooding out of his pores and onto the floor; library staff were right behind him. But not right enough. An hour after the Southerner's close call  Al Aaraaf  was in Gold's hands.

As Travis McDade, author of The Book Thief: The True Crimes of Daniel Spiegelman, and curator of rare books at the University of Illinois College of Law writes in his new book, Thieves of Book Row: New York's Most Notorious Rare Book Ring and the Man Who Stopped It, Bergquist's pursuit of Al Aaraaf  (he was as anxious to retrieve it as he was to nail the perp) led to the unraveling of the Romm Gang. Significantly, the case spurred libraries across the country to beef up security, which, at the time, was, to put it delicately, in its infancy.

And book theft had been, until this episode, casually treated by the police and lightly prosecuted. Book thieves were considered to be mentally ill, at the mercy of an uncontrollable passion, the "gentle madness" that Nicholas A. Basbanes has written so well about. Book thieves were finally considered to be criminals and, in New York, accommodations at Sing-Sing now awaited the convicted.

As McDade makes clear in this exhaustively researched book - 185 pages of text with twenty-three pages of notes - book theft was nothing new. Its roots stretch back to the mid-nineteenth century when the first public libraries in the U.S. were established, and library theft has always attracted colorful characters. No less so were the rare and antiquarian booksellers who were actively or passively complicit in the traffic in stolen books. Those with a nose for trade history may be startled to see many familiar names from the past and learn that some of those, amongst the most respected dealers in the U.S., were not averse to acquiring books warm to the touch. The rare book trade has always been a capital-intensive, feast or famine business with even the most successful dealers often on the brink of disaster. It's a great passion but a tough way to earn a living. The temptation to acquire books at suspiciously low prices once loomed large and the quest for legitimate bargains remains an ongoing imperative. Idealists who enter the trade are soon disillusioned; purity is for Ivory soap. This is hard commerce.

Thieves of Book Row, published by Oxford University Press, is a scholastic book that wants to be a popular true crime narrative and, to a large extent, it succeeds. There is rough going at first as McDade tries to wrestle the wealth of material into submission and draw us in. The sins of academic writing are difficult to exorcise but McDade, who teaches a class at University of Illinois on Rare Books, Crime & Punishment, soon loosens up, hits his stride, and the story takes off with a delightful dose of wit, a broad splash of color, and rich details and anecdotes.

Example: Adolf Stager, owner, with his son, of the Cadmus Bookshop, routinely and curiously wore his hat and coat at all times while in the shop. Why? He was on disability insurance and not allowed to work so he maintained a full-time facade that he was simply visiting his son at the store in case the authorities dropped by to check on him.

Bandits, rascals and rogues; good guys, scholars, and strugglers; individualists, misfits, and the melancholy: the rare book trade's personnel department never has to recruit, we just show up. The feral bandits have been tamed, if not domesticated, since trade associations emerged in the mid-20th century and established codes of ethics, which even non-association members tend to follow; it's just good business. The fact that book theft is now considered a serious crime with serious consequences has tempered the temptation for stealer and receiving dealer alike. The overwhelming number of rare and antiquarian booksellers are on the square and perhaps the worst that can be said about a dealer's behavior reiterates Chico Marx's reply in A Day At The Races when Groucho asks if he can trust Harpo.

"Sure, he's honest," Chico says, "but you gotta watch him a little."

I love the trade and our cast of characters. And I loved this book, a chronicle of Booktown's  Depression-era mean streets when literary culture met organized crime.

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McDADE, Travis. Thieves of Book Row. New York's Notorious Rare Book Ring and the Man Who Stopped It. New York: Oxford University Press, (June) 2013. First edition. Octavo. xi, [1], 216 pp. Black cloth, gilt-lettered spine. Dust jacket. $27.95.

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The Shocking Story Of The First Woman Executed By Electric Chair

by Stephen J. Gertz

She bristles with courage, she has poise, assurance, no end of intelligence... she loves like fire and she hates like T.N.T. ... More power and good luck to her, guilty or not. It would be a waste and a shame to burn up such a woman ... for dramatic, poetic purposes, alone, I say --- VIVE LA RUTH! (From the Preface by Jack Lait).

She wasn't the true first (who remembers Martha M. Place?) but when Ruth Brown Snyder (1895 - 1928), a Queens, NYC housewife, sat down in Sing-Sing's Ol' Sparky at 11PM, January 12, 1928, she became, in the public imagination, the first femme to fry. She was certainly one of the most celebrated occupants of The Chair during the Roaring 'Twenties.

Ruth Snyder, during her trial.

“'Ruthless Ruth,' as the press inevitably called her, was on the wrong side of 30 and married to a wet blanket on the wrong side of 40 from whom she couldn’t even get away during the day because they worked for the same boating magazine.

"The banal hell of the bourgeoisie.

"Ruth had a banal solution: commence affair with handsome, limp-willed corset salesman (also married) from New Jersey.

"Given a large enough metropolis with a large enough pool of adulterous data points, it must be statistically inexorable that a certain proportion will resolve the love triangle by throttling the cuckold with a wire" (Executed Today).

Snyder's execution led to the creation of one of the most iconic photographs of the 20th Century. Her final seconds were inelegantly caught on film by Tom Howard, reputedly a Chicago Tribune reporter, who clandestinely photographed the moment by use of a miniature camera strapped to his ankle. The next morning, the photograph blazoned across the front pages of the New York Daily News, and to this date it is the only photograph of a person being electrocuted in such Grand Guignol circumstances. Howard's camera now resides in the collections of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. 

Ruth Snyder now resides in the collections of Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, NY, Arbutus plot, Section 119, Lot 16528.

Mug Shot, Sing-Sing, 1927.

Ruth Snyder's Own True Story is a very rare little book. OCLC notes only two copies in institutional holdings worldwide but, then again, who outside the U.S. would care? Only one copy has recently come to market. It may be already gone by the time you read this.

According to Last Meals Before Execution, on her final day alive Ruth Snyder  told her figure to take a flying one; she wasn't going to need it anymore. To help the medicine go down, Ruth  primed herself with Chicken Parmesan with pasta Alfredo, ice cream, two milkshakes, and a 12-pack of grape soda. 

Followed by a lot of juice, 1220 volts, in three big gulps.

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SNYDER, Ruth Brown. BELASCO, David.  LAIT, Jack. MACK, Williard. SHIPMAN, Samuel - Contributors. Ruth Snyder's Own True Story. Published Complete for the First Time Anywhere. Written by Herself in the Death Cell. 25¢. [New York]: King Features Syndicate, (1927). First edition. Quarto (11-1/4" x 8-1/2 in.). Orange pictorial paper wrappers, printed in white with B&W drawing of an incarcerated Snyder to center and facsimile signature to lower third. 47, [1 (blank)] pp. Illustrated with 10 B&W images from photographs, including all the key players in the crime and trial. 

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Book image courtesy of Tavistock Books, currently offering this title, with our thanks.
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The Houdini of Cell Block A

by Stephen J. Gertz

The notorious bandit Otto Wood (1895-1930) became something of a folk hero in the North Carolina mountains in the late 1920s when, following a conviction for killing a Jewish pawnbroker, he succeeded in escaping from prison no fewer than three times, thus earning the sobriquet, "The Houdini of Cell Block A." A Depression desperado, Wood was finally killed in a shootout on the streets of Salisbury, North Carolina in December, 1930, shortly after his final prison escape.

Despite an obligatory author's foreword expressing a wish that his story might "...help some fallen mortal to a higher life," Wood's narrative is refreshingly unrepentant, detailing a lifelong career of petty crime, vagabondage, moonshining, gambling, whoring and periodic incarceration. 

The twelve-page afterword to this edition, written anonymously, recounts the events that followed Wood's final escape, concluding with the Salisbury shoot-out. Wood's exploits were immortalized in Walter “Kid” Smith's 1931 ballad Otto Wood The Bandit, which ended each verse with the refrain: "...Otto, why didn't you run / when the sheriff pulled out that .44 gun?" The ballad was re-recorded in the 1960s by Doc and Merle Watson, and has since become a folk-music standard.

Step up, buddies, and listen to my song
I'll sing it to you right, but you may sing it wrong,
All about a man named Otto Wood,
I can't tell you all, but I wish I could.

He walked in a pawn shop a rainy day,

And with the clerk he had a quarrel, they say.

Pulled out his pistol and he struck him a blow,

And this is the way the story goes.

They spread the news as fast as they could,
T
he sheriff served a warrant on Otto Wood.

The jury said murder in the second degree,

And the judge passed the sentence to the peniteniary.

CHORUS: Otto, why didn't you run?

Otto's done dead and gone.

Otto Wood, why didn't you run

When the sheriff pulled out his 44 gun?

They put him in the pen, but it done no good,

It wouldn't hold the man they call Otto Wood.

It wasn't very long till he slipped outside,

Drawed a gun on the guard, said, "Take me for a ride."

Second time they caught him was away out west,

In the holdup game, he got shot through the breast.

They brought him back and when he got well,

They locked him down in a dungeon cell.

He was a man they could not run,

He always carried a 44 gun.

He loved the women and he hated the law,

And he just wouldn't take nobody's jaw.

He rambled out west and he rambled all around,

He met the sheriff in a southern town.

And the sheriff says, "Otto, step this way,

'Cause I've been expecting you every day."

He pulled out his gun and then he said,

"If you make a crooked move, you both fall dead.
 
Crank up your car and take me out of town,"

And a few minutes later, he was graveyard bound.

 

This is an exceedingly rare book in any edition. OCLC notes four copies in library holdings worldwide, recording a 1926 edition of forty-three pages and a 1931 edition of twenty-two pages. However, the present edition, with added matter and an afterword, is, apparently,  unrecorded by any OCLC member institution. 

Above, The Carolina Buddies (Walter "Kid" Smith and friends) perform Otto Wood, the Bandit,  recorded in NYC, NY on February 4, 1931.
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WOOD, Otto. Life History of Otto Wood. Inmate North Carolina State Prison 1926. Wadesboro, NC: Pee Dee Publishing Company, 1931. Posthumous (second?) edition, complete, of a virtually unobtainable Southern outlaw narrative. Significantly expanded with photo-illustrations and a twelve page afterword.  Twelvemo (19.5 cm). 62 pp,  three leaves of half-tone photo-illustrations. Staple-bound pamphlet with original photo-illustrated wrappers.

Thornton, A Bibliography of North Carolina 1589-1956, 15354. Not in Suvak, Memoirs of American Prisons: An Annotated Bibliography.

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Image courtesy of Lorne Bair Rare Books, with our thanks.
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Police Blotter: A Brief Census of Herbert Asbury's America

 First edition, 1940.

Yeah, I read da books: The French Quarter, Gem of the Prairie, The Gangs of New York, The Barbary Coast.  Dis guy, Herbert Asbury, poked around where no one else had the brass. He went back to the old days - my days - and into the shadows.  Talked about dem in dat ol' gang o'mine; jeez, what a parade o' personalities.  It wuz a time when and a world where  a person's name told you a thing or two. I knew 'em all; we wuz friends. I raise a glass and toast to Auld Ang Syne; dese old acquaintances won't be forgot.

First edition, 1933.

Oh, there wuz Big Louise, Big Matilda, Big Lotta, Big Maud, Big Nellie, Big Mary,  Big Jack Zelig, an' Big Nose Bunker; Kate Bunty, Calico Jim, Chew Tin Gop; Dutch Emma, Italian Dave, Dago Frank,  English Jim, London Izzy Lazarus, an' Irish Annie Davis; The Girl in Blue, Happy Hooligan, Shanghai Kelly, Nymphia, One Year Tim, Oofty Goofty Gus, Pigeon-Toed Sal, Rotary Rosie; Spanish Kitty, Spanish Johnny, an' Spanish Louie; Steam-Schooner Ruby, Three-Fingered Jack, Battle Annie, Yakey-Yake Brady, Gold Mine Jimmy, an' Hell Cat Maggie; Kid Dropper, Kid Twist, Kid Jigger, Kid Dahl, Kid Glove Rosie, an' The Lobster Kid; Monk Eastman,  Circular Jack,  an' Crazy Butch; Red Phil Davidson, an' Red Rocks Farrell; Ding Dong, Hinky Dink, an' Dandy Johnny Dolan.

Gangs of New York. First edition, 1928.

An' there wuz Little Annie, Little Augie, Little Kishky, Little Rhody, an' Little Patsy Doyle; Banjo Pete, Dopey Bennie Fein, Mag Gallus,  an' Breezy Garrity; Jane the Grabber, Lizzie the Dove, Gyp the Blood, Ike the Plug, Ike the Blood, Patsy the Barber, Ida the Goose, Sadie the Goat, Harry the Soldier, Louie the Lump, Jack the Rat, Joe the Greaser, Bill the Butcher, Paddy the Bear, Sweeney the Boy, Cora the Blonde, Charley the Cripple, Benny the Dip, an' Johnny the Mick; Itsky Joe Hickman, Silver Dollar Smith, Hoochy-Coochie Mary, an' Hungry Joe Lewis. 

First edition, 1936.

Yeah, an' there wuz Humpty Jackson,  Jewbach, Bathhouse John, Sheeny Mike Kurtz, Scotchy Lavelle, Pickles Laydon,   Cyclone Louie,  an' Lefty Lewis Rosenberg; Blind Mahoney, Bum Mahoney, Stumpy Malarkey, Dinny Meehan, One-Armed Charley  Monell, an' Happy Jack Mulraney; Nigger Ruhl, Nigger Mike Salter, an' Nigger Benny Snyder; Nellie Noonan, Old Mother Hubbard, Lottie "Queen of the Cokies" Hustion, Queen Liz, an' Eugene "King of the Cokies" Hustion;  there wuz Beanie Rosenthal, Greedy Jack Rand, Chick Tricker, Mush Riley, Rags Riley, Razor Riley,  Piker Ryan, Rubber Shaw, Sassy Sam, Tommy Shay, Terrible John, an' Slobbery Jim.

 First edition in paperback, 1950. Avon 263.

Jeez, I miss 'em.  Whuda cast o' characters.

I'm Stosh Gershowitz. But my friends call me Readin' Steve, the Ball-Bearin' Hebe, on account of I once clipped a kid of his Spaldeen right smack in fronta his mother while I wuz perusin' a book at da time. Da mom musta thought I wuz a student, a solid citizen. I wuz. I wuz a student at Onthestreet U.  Got my diploma in The Big Con. 

First edition in paperback, 1962. Ace K-148.

I'm  with Goldman Sachs, now. Feel right at home. There's Mortgage Macher Mike,  Brass Balls Billy Malone, Sub-Prime Pete,  Big Bubble Bob,  Speculator Jones, Arbitrage Arnie,  Dandy Dan Derivatives, Sinkin' Dollar Dave, Kid Quant, Eddie the Gyp Econ, Moe the  Market-maker, an' Slimeball Sammy Sell-Short... These guys; jeez, I thought I knew all the angles. I'm tellin' ya, I'm in grad school.

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ASBURY, Herbert. The Gangs of New York. An Informal History of the Underworld. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1928. Octavo. xviii, 382 pp.

ASBURY, Herbert. The Barbary Coast. An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1933. Octavo. 319, xi pp.
 

ASBURY, Herbert. The French Quarter. An Informal History of the French Underworld. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1936. Octavo. 462, xvi pp.

ASBURY, Herbert. Gem of the Prairie. An Informal History of the Chicago Underworld. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1940. Octavo. 377, xix pp. Reprinted as Gangs of Chicago.

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All names are real, and found in the books.
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Image of Gangs of New York courtesy of Between the Covers. Image of The French Quarter courtesy of Madame Talbot.
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