(Library of Congress - Prints and Photographs Division)
– stomach.
Have a great Thanksgiving!
. New York: George W. Matsell, 1859.Note: See “Cant: The Language of the Underworld” to learn more about the background of the American Malefactor’s Dictionary.
Click the image to go to Early American Crimes
The lush worker is headed to the annals of early American crime.
The New York Times recently reported that, according to the New York Police Department, a specific breed of pickpocket, the lush worker, will soon be extinct. The lush worker rides the New York City subways late at night looking for a drunken reveler who has fallen asleep during his train ride home. The thief will then nudge the potential victim and if there is no response, he or she will use a straight-edge razor to cut open the man’s pocket and take his wallet.
The individual methods, time, and place that go into defining a lush worker are not unique. The use of a blade or scissors to cut open someone’s pocket or purse goes back to at least the seventeenth century in London, when pickpockets employed this method in the midst of large crowds. Thieves have long taken advantage of the late night, when it is easier to find people with their guards down due to drunkenness or sleepiness. And public transportation has often provided opportunities for pickpockets to prey on unsuspecting riders.
But there is something about the precise combination of all these components that is leading to the demise of the lush worker in New York City. In fact, the combination has become so unique that the NYC police department knows with certainty that there are only 109 practicing lush workers in the city, and almost all of them are middle-aged men or older.
Crimes have been known to disappear over time. Some early crimes, like witchcraft, are no longer prosecuted because the behavior is no longer considered criminal. Other crimes have disappeared due to evolving technologies and social structures. Highway robbery vanished when cars replaced horses as a primary mode of transportation, and people could no longer hold up someone sitting in a steel box going 30+ miles per hour.
The police do not know exactly why lush working is dying out. Perhaps the skill involved in cutting open a pocket without slicing the victim’s leg is considered too great to learn. Perhaps easier and more lucrative crimes have attracted petty thieves who are coming up the ranks. But even though someone falls victim to a lush worker almost every weekend, the number of lush workers keeps falling every time one of them retires or dies. (Although, perhaps the New York Times article and this one will inspire more thieves to try their hand at the trade.)
Since the New York Times article focuses on the demise of the lush worker, I thought I would investigate some of the early instances of the practice in America. As I searched early newspapers for stories, the singularity of lush working became clear, because none of the reports I uncovered precisely fit the approach of these modern-day pickpockets. But my searches also reveal that the lush worker belongs to a specific family of pickpockets who have a long tradition in America.
Some of the cases I found involved sleep, but not necessarily drunkenness. In 1872, George Fisher of 510 Broome Street in New York City was unable to sleep indoors due to the heat of the summer, so he sat outside on the steps of his residence and “was shortly in the arms of Morpheus.†At four o’clock in the morning, the feeling of someone going through his vest pocket awakened him. Fisher quickly realized that he had been robbed of one dollar, but he luckily spotted the perpetrator walking away from him and was able to have him arrested.
In 1909, Henry Slavic of Enderlin, North Dakota believed that procuring a hotel room during his visit to Minneapolis would be a waste of money. He felt secure in his knowledge that he had $60 sown into the lining of his pants, so he put together a makeshift bed in an alley and fell into a deep slumber. His night outdoors was so comfortable, in fact, that he almost turned over and went back to sleep when the sun hit his eyes in the morning. But he jumped out of “bed†when he happened to look down and saw that his trousers had been ripped to shreds. Needless to say, his $60 was missing.
C. H. Yates of Fort Worth, TX had a dream one Friday night in 1915 that he was late for work, but when he reached into his pocket to pull out his watch to prove to his irate boss that he was indeed on time, he could not find the timepiece. Yates then woke up on the street bench where he had fallen asleep during the night and discovered that his dream had truth to it: his watch was indeed missing from his pocket. He looked up and spotted someone running away from him a half block away, but he was unable to recover the watch.
Alcohol may have played a role in the above pickpocket cases, but the newspaper articles make no mention that it did. More often than not, though, those who imbibe too much raise their chances of falling prey to a petty thief. In 1891, the Evening News of San Jose, CA reported that Thomas H. Coogan was arrested for robbing a drunk in the rear of a saloon after he was spotted cutting open his victim’s pocket and taking his money. The victim, however, was too drunk to know how much money Coogan had stolen from him.
The earliest American case I could find of someone who fell victim to pickpockets who resemble today’s lush workers involved Thomas King of Dublin, Ireland. In 1834, King came to Philadelphia with the Solicitor General of Upper Canada, but when it came time for the two of them to head to Toronto, King could not be found because he was out getting drunk. His companion decided to leave without him.
King remained in the city for two weeks in a constant state of drunkenness, until one morning he returned to his hotel without his hat, watch, or pocketbook, which had been removed from his coat pocket after it had been shredded with a razor blade. The one thing that King was in possession of, however, was a black eye. Still drunk, King attacked the owner of the hotel after he accused the man of robbing him. The owner dragged King to the police station, where during questioning King took a swipe at the investigating officer. King was thrown into a cell to sober up and was charged with assault and battery.
In order to combat the activity of the 109 lush workers operating in New York City, plain clothes police officers ride the trains looking for suspicious activity, although some of the pickpockets have been arrested so many times that they recognize and even greet the officers. In 1899, a vigilant conductor of a trolley car in New Orleans spotted William Nagel robbing a rider. He notified the police, and it turned out that Nagel, an elderly man who fits the description of today’s lush workers, was a first-class pickpocket. The victim, G. L. Ray, a barber who lived at 628 Bourbon Street, turns out to have spent much of the night getting drunk with Nagel. Nagel was arrested and charged with robbery. Ray was also arrested and charged with being drunk.
(Prints and Photographs Division - Library of Congress)
On a train bound for San Francisco in 1907, Herman Cohn stole the watch of N. D. Hall after Hall had fallen asleep next to him. Once Cohn procured the watch, he leaned back and boasted about his accomplishment to the man sitting behind him and informed him that he was going to go after Hall’s money next. Hall, however, woke up, discovered that his watch was missing, and immediately suspected his seatmate. Hall grabbed Cohn by the neck and pushed his thumbs into his Adam’s apple until Cohn’s tongue was forced out of his mouth. Hall then threatened, “Now dig up that watch you ____ ____ before I kill you.†Cohn reached into this left pocket and returned the watch.
Meanwhile, the man sitting behind the two riders notified the conductor about Cohn’s earlier disclosure, so a police officer was waiting at the station to arrest Hall when they arrived in San Mateo.
All of the crimes cited above contain elements of the approach employed by lush workers today, but in each case at least one element is missing. Here are the two cases I came across that appear to resemble the operation of today’s lush workers the most.
While riding on the No. 35 train of the Southern line to Charlotte, NC in 1902, a passenger who claimed to be a painter engaged R. L. Stogner in seemingly endless conversation. Stogner was glad to leave the train and his talkative companion when they pulled into the station, but when he arrived uptown he discovered that a hole had been cut in his hip pocket and that his purse containing $17.50 was gone. His seatmate had used his conversation skills to distract Stogner while he cut an incision in his trousers and took the purse. Current-day lush workers would no doubt be impressed by the ability of this pickpocket to carry out such a theft on a conscious victim.
In 1869, Alfred Oliver got drunk with three other men during a trip to New York. But when Oliver sobered up, he discovered that the pocket of his pants, which contained $215 worth of gold, had been cut out. Oliver reported the theft to the police upon their arrival, and the three men who were drinking with him were arrested. These lush workers certainly did not select the best place to carry out their crime: they were on a passenger ship bound from San Francisco to New York, which severely limited their ability to escape from the crime scene.
Even though I was unable to find an early case that precisely matched the practice of today’s lush workers, all of these stories are close enough that I am confident that such cases must have occurred soon after trains became a primary mode of transportation. They simply went unreported. After all, how many people want to admit to falling prey to a pickpocket after falling asleep drunk on a train?
– handcuffs.
Note: See “Cant: The Language of the Underworld” to learn more about the background of the American Malefactor’s Dictionary.
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After one week, hunger finally drove Owen Syllavan out of his hiding place in the Connecticut woods and forced him to seek refuge with an acquaintance. Syllavan cut open a plank in the floor of his friend’s house, dug a large cavity that went under the hearth of the fireplace, and rigged a vent so that the smoke from his own makeshift fireplace would go up the main chimney.
As Syllavan sat in the dark in 1756 with only the fire in his chimney for light, he must have reflected on how he had come to be lying in a hole in the ground and perhaps about how his present situation was not unlike a scene from his childhood.
Owen Syllavan was born near the town of Fethard, Ireland and admits that from a young age, he was “always in all kinds of mischief; so that I never minded Father or Mother, Sister nor Brother; but went on in all Manner of Vice.†When he was eleven, his parents became so fed up with his behavior that they locked in a room for a period of time and fed him only bread and water. But the punishment failed to have its effect, because when Syllavan finally gained his liberty, he was “ten times worse†than he was before. Exasperated, his parents sent him away to live with a strict schoolmaster.
Syllavan’s real name was John, and as if to underscore this point, an evil spirit began to visit him while he slept at the schoolmaster’s house and repeatedly called his name, “John, John, John.†This chant would go on for several minutes at a time throughout the night. The visitations continued three nights in a row, so the schoolmaster began to stay with Syllavan in his room. But the spirit kept appearing.
Ministers were brought in. People prayed. They tried moving Syllavan to another house. All to no avail. As soon as the clock hit eleven o’clock, the spirit began calling, “John, John, John.†Syllavan became sick, and the sounds of the spirit began to grow. Finally, Syllavan was returned home, but this time the spirit did not follow him.
Syllavan continued his evil ways until at the age of thirteen he left the “tyranny†of his parents and ran away. He came upon some men who were about to sail to Waterford, and when he asked them to take him there so that he could visit his aunt, he told the men his name was Owen Syllavan. The name stuck, although at other times he went by John Brown and John Livingston (whether either of these last names was his real one is not known).
Syllavan continued to travel around Ireland until he met a man on the road who asked him where he was from. Syllavan answered that he was from Dublin and, his poor parents being dead, that he was travelling to Cork to see if he could find any of his relatives. The man told Syllavan that if he agreed to live with him instead, that he would be his “friend and relation too.†Syllavan ended up going back to the man’s house, where he indentured himself to him for seven years and became the foot-page of the man’s wife.
After serving the family for six years, Syllavan suddenly became homesick, so when his master asked him to deliver a letter one day, Syllavan used the opportunity to run away. He ended up back at Waterford, but never made it back to his parents. Instead, he once again bound himself as an indentured servant–this time for four years on a ship headed to Boston.
The trip lasted nine weeks, and there were not enough provisions on board to satisfy the number of people who had signed up for the trip. Syllavan was desperately hungry, so he offered to give the captain three more years of his service in exchange for all the biscuits he could eat within a specified time span. The captain laughed and agreed to the bargain, although he added the condition that Syllavan could not drink anything within that time frame.
After the ship arrived in Boston, Syllavan was sold to a man who lived in St. George in what is now Maine. He spent two and a half years clearing land and chopping wood, until the family moved to Boston in fear of the French and Indian War. Syllavan’s owner sold his remaining time to a captain, and Syllavan spent the next two years serving as a soldier. He then reenlisted in the army against the wishes of his master and eventually became the chief armorer, where he learned to engrave guns. Syllavan enjoyed the rigors of the army, and his rising success prompted him to get married.
The marriage turned out to be disastrous. The two newlyweds began to drink too much, and “through her aggravating Tongue,†he began to neglect his duties and was demoted to a common soldier. Syllavan used his time off-duty to practice his skills as a silversmith. One day, he cast a Spanish dollar, and absent-mindedly left it out on his workbench. Someone saw the coin and turned him in for counterfeiting. He was tried in front of a court marshal and even though he pled guilty to making the coin, he was acquitted. Later, he quarreled with a fellow soldier and received fifty lashes as punishment.
Syllavan’s regiment broke up around the end of 1748, so he set up an engraving business in Boston. One day, two men asked him to engrave a plate that could be used to print New Hampshire money and paid him well for doing so. In the belief that he had stumbled upon “an easy way of getting money,†Syllavan started to counterfeit Boston bills of credit.
Neighbors watched as Syllavan began to live large, but they also noticed that his expenses never seemed to match his income. Then Syllavan’s wife inadvertently cried out during an argument, “Hey, you Forty Thousand Money-Maker.†The neighbors overheard the remark, and they lodged a complaint. When the authorities searched Syllavan’s workshop, they discovered a mold for casting dollars, ink, copperplate, and pieces of paper on which Syllavan had practiced imitating the signatures on bills of credit. Syllavan was immediately arrested and put in jail.
While Syllavan was in confinement, he used his free time to engrave three plates that could be used to print New Hampshire and Boston money. He then sold the plates to a friend in exchange for help in getting him out of prison. As a result Syllavan was released on bail, but he was soon found guilty of committing forgery. As punishment, he stood two hours in the pillory and received twenty lashes at the whipping post.
After his release, the two men who originally commissioned the New Hampshire plates from Syllavan were caught holding counterfeit money. In an attempt to save themselves, they both “turned King’s evidence†by offering to provide testimony against the engraver, but Syllavan managed to escape capture and fled to Rhode Island.
While in Rhode Island, Syllavan returned to his counterfeiting business and added several accomplices to his operation. With their aid, he printed and distributed 12,000 pounds of Rhode Island money, but the wife of one of his partners was caught passing some of the counterfeit bills, which threatened to bring down the whole operation.
Boston Post-Boy - August 17, 1752 (From Early American Newspapers, an Archive of Americana Collection, published by Readex (Readex.com), a division of NewsBank, inc.)
Syllavan tried to protect his associates by telling them to claim that they believed the counterfeit money they received from him to be real, but one member of the group, Nicholas Stephens, decided to protect himself by giving evidence against the others. Stephens’s plan backfired. Syllavan’s confederates held firm to their story, and Syllavan backed them up by pleading guilty and maintaining that he had cheated them without their knowledge. As a result, both Stephens and Syllavan were found guilty and sentenced to branding on both cheeks with an “R,†cropping of their ears, and imprisonment.
Syllavan charmed the public and his captors so much that not only was his corporal punishment inflicted in such a light manner that it barely showed, but he was so casually guarded that he broke free from the guards, grabbed a cutlass, and used it to encourage the executioner to administer Stephens’s punishment to its full effect. Syllavan escaped several times during his imprisonment and on his last attempt fled to Dutchess County, New York.
In New York, Syllavan formed a new gang of counterfeiters, and since they were centered in the town of Dover, they became known as the Dover Money Club. Almost all of the members had a crop or brand mark, which they wore with honor, since the marks indicated that they were seasoned in their field.
By this time, Syllavan was an accomplished engraver, and he produced high quality bills that were almost impossible to distinguish from the originals. The Club developed an extensive network of passers and agents throughout Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New York, and Syllavan traveled throughout New England printing bills for Club associates. But Syllavan had become quarrelsome and demanding, and he was rarely sober. In addition, the extensive activities of the gang were beginning to catch the notice of the authorities.
In early 1756, someone recognized Syllavan and his gang hanging out in western Connecticut and reported them. The authorities swooped in and began arresting the members of the Club. But Syllavan learned what was happening before they could capture him. He retreated into a wood near a swamp and then into the mountains, before ending up in the bunker he had dug under his friend’s house.
While Syllavan hid underground, several men arrived looking for him. The owners of the house denied any knowledge of his whereabouts, but one of the men discovered some newly moved dirt, so they began a more diligent search. They entered a bedroom where a woman was presumably sleeping, moved the bed to the side with the woman still in it, and discovered a loose plank that was cut in two. After the men removed the plank, Syllavan emerged from the earthen cavity and surrendered.
Syllavan was first taken to the New Haven jail and then transferred to New York, where he was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to execution. He took pride in the fact that even though his accomplices deserved the same fate as him, that he did not betray any of them. At his execution on Monday, May 10, 1756, he expressed hope that his associates would destroy all of their money, plates, and counterfeiting accessories, so that they would not meet a similar end.
Syllavan essentially received his wish. Only one other gang member out of the 29 in the group was ever punished, with the rest either eluding capture, escaping after arrest, or receiving acquittals due to a lack of evidence.
(Prints and Photographs Division - Library of Congress)
– a nose.
– a pulled nose.
From the nose being the front-most part of the face, as the bowsprit is of a ship.
. New York: George W. Matsell, 1859.Note: See “Cant: The Language of the Underworld” to learn more about the background of the American Malefactor’s Dictionary.
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