A man who spent more than two years in the Tombs on a murder charge was put through the “third degree” both in the Fifth Street Station House and at Police Headquarters. It is not customary to put a man through the third degree in the station house, but this man claims to have been an exception. The crook in question spent several nights in the cells in the Fifth Street House, and spoke from experience. On the morning of the day when he was taken to 300 Mulberry street, he said two plain clothes men took him from a cell in the basement, and forthwith boxed his ears and cuffed him unmercifully over the face for five minutes, or until he became greatly excited and almost insane! After this, he was taken upstairs to a room, a veritable sweat-box, where he was “piled” with questions, one after another, for an hour, for the purpose, if possible, of making him contradict himself. All the answers he gave during this star-chamber investigation were taken down, and he was then compelled to sign, or else have his face and ears boxed a second time. In reality the signing of this document made him the author of a crime. In other words, the “third degree” is simply giving to a crook a most unmerciful cuffing and abusing, till his eyes are all discolored, and his face is covered with blood, and he is more silly than sane. This is done that he may confess all the details of his crime, and become an informer on those who were in the job with him. This method is the torture of the Orient, the thumbscrews of the Middle Ages, and is cruel and diabolical. Central Office men have said that the third degree was one of Inspector Byrnes’ “hobbies,” as he resorted to it on all occasions. When it began to leak out in 1884 that Jake Sharp had bribed the Board of Aldermen to transfer to his company the Broadway franchise, it was found most difficult to secure any evidence to connect the guilty ones with the crime. Inspector Byrnes, who was in the Detective Department at the time, devised means whereby he was able with the aid of some of his men, to entice one of the “boodlers” to a Sixth avenue restaurant, where the flow of wine unloosed his tongue, and where he admitted that he had sold his vote to Jake Sharp for five thousand dollars. Inspector Byrnes, who was on the premises behind a screen, hidden from view, had all the admissions taken down, and they were used to convict the “boodler” and send him to State Prison. After this “boodler’s” arrest, and he was taken to Headquarters, Byrnes put him through the “third degree”; when he saw the answers and admissions he had made in the Sixth avenue restaurant in cold type, he broke down.