The Secrets of the Great City: A Work Descriptive of the Virtues and the Vices, the Mysteries, Miseries and Crimes of New York CityMcCabe, James Dabney
History
The Secrets of the Great City: A Work Descriptive of the Virtues and the Vices, the Mysteries, Miseries and Crimes of New York City
McCabe, James Dabney
New York (N.Y.) -- Description and travel; New York (N.Y.) -- History
A man calling himself Doctor Thorne is frequently seen in the city
boarding houses. He is a married man, which fact, of course, makes him
all the more dangerous to his victims, as he contrives to support at
their expense not only himself, but his wife and children. The Doctor
is a burly, heavily-bearded gentleman (at least in manner); his wife, a
more accomplished Jeremy Diddler than himself, is one of the softest-
spoken and most amiably-seeming of her sex. The Doctor plays his little
game as follows: He obtains first-class rooms at first class prices,
pledging as security for the payment of these prices a large assortment
of really valuable baggage in the line of clothes and linens. Having
taken possession of his rooms he is, after a week's time, suddenly
called by business to Chicago or St. Louis; he will settle the little
balance due on his return. He accordingly departs, but not to St.
Louis, or Chicago--oh, dear, no. He understands a trick worth two of
that. He simply hires a little room in a retired street at the lowest
possible rent, and there resides. His wife and children--two boys, one
aged ten, the other twelve, and both very "smart"--take him his meals
daily, in a basket, in their pocket, or by other means, as the case may
be, the meals being furnished unwittingly by the victimized landlady
with whom his family are sojourning. But more than meals are taken from
the boarding house. The baggage is also taken away, piece after piece,
secretly, and conveyed to the little room where the "head and father"
of this interesting family resides. So one day, after an unaccountable
absence of Dr. Thorne from home, and after the receipt by his wife of
daily letters from her husband, but no money, though money is always
expected by the next mail, the whole family disappear, one by one, and
never return. The landlady congratulates herself upon the fact that she
retains at least the baggage--but alas, upon an examination she finds
that nothing is left her in lieu of the month's board for three people
and a week's board for the fourth, saving some empty trunks. For a few
days subsequent to this denouement, Dr. Thorne and family live in
retirement. Then they boldly emerge and repeat the same series of
operations in other localities of this much beswindled city.
A TRIO OF FEMALE SWINDLERS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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