America 1870-1900 - LAW AND ORDER

Part 1 AN EYE FOR AN EYE
SO this is the law and order section and I am really not excited about reading it. I have had about enough of man’s inhumanity to man lately! I don’t have a good feeling about this.

Man the first paragraph is just a litany of stone cold killers. Next paragraph is the gangs of New York and good old organized crime! I won’t even mention the picture of hanged rapist Frank McManus opposite the text. I feel down quite the rabbit hole of internets looking into the identity of his victim and what happened to her. I didn’t find much, but more than Time Life was willing to do. She was a child when she was attacked, but based on what I found out, she lived at least into her 20s. Not a lot of info, but I found a picture of her as a young woman and she appeared to be not institutionalized or off the rails.

Part 2 ALERT AND FAITHFUL
Wells Fargo was interesting! James Hume was a fancy-man who started using science to solve crimes. And in his rogues gallery of stagecoach robbers I found “Eugene Tyler (negro) Robbed Los Banos Stage, May 7, 1877 with Dan McCarthy” and Tom Horn a letter thief who looks like he might be black/Asian but isn’t identified as such.

Part 3 SIX GUN JUSTICE
This is an exciting retelling of the Younger Gangs undoing at the hands of the Northfield Minnesota vigilante mob. My godchildren live in Northfield. I wonder if they are aware of the town’s rich criminal history?

Part 4 THE PIONEERING PRIVATE EYE
So...in discussing the Pinkertons, the Molly Maguires are wedged in between master thief Adam Worth (thought to be the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes' nemesis Moriarty)and serial killer Herman Webster Mudgett of DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY fame. I guess that speaks to which version of history Time Life is buying. The Molly Maguires (at least the 20 who were convicted on Pinkerton evidence and hanged)  are perceived by some as union agitators taken down by a corrupt system financed by powerful industrialists and by others as violent terrorists. I had always heard the former and Sean Connery and Richard Harris would agree with me.

According to the book, “Once he had nailed his man, Pinkerton had a unique talent for encouraging the unhappy felon to confess.” Pinkerton attributed it to a guilty conscience, but could it also have been a beat down?

Pinkerton’s logo was an eye with the words “we never sleep” beneath it which led to the term “private eye”. Who knew? Pinkerton came to prominence when he foiled an assassination attempt on Abraham Lincoln and set up the first secret service during the Civil War. He caught Mrs. Rose Greenhow - a woman! - who bears looking at as a successful female, albeit a confederate spy.

Pinkerton retired, eventually passing the business on to his son. He wrote crime novels and still investigated crimes for fun. He died of a gangrenous wound on his tongue that he got while taking his daily constitutional. As I have always said - walking kills. TL describes it as an “ignominious death” and even though I have heard the word ignominious before, I am going to count it under new words to me as I have not used it in conversation before. But I shall henceforth!

Part 5 TARNISH ON THE COPPER BADGE
Here we go, police corruption. I have been hearing something about this lately. Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst of the NY society for the Prevention of Crime was thought to have solved this back in 1892. And yet...

Vocabulary alert! The “seamy side” refers to a stocking or a garment - the uglier side that holds the whole thing together. I never knew this!

So Parkhurst was a clerical fellow who was not afraid to visit the “seamy side” (“‘Show me something worse’, was his constant cry.”) and then he publicized it. Basically, he preached about police corruption - specifically Tammany Hall. When he was asked to back up his allegations with proof, he went out and gathered proof. He cited his sources like a boss.

Part 6 THE WAGES OF CRIME
State prison in St. Cloud is photographed near the end of the century, all white men - both convicts and law enforcement. It is, however, Minnesota.

“You don’t want any musky sentimentality when you are dealing with criminals. One of the things that many of our great reformers should learn is that fellow-feeling for the criminal is out of place.” Teddy Roosevelt. Hmmmmm, Ted - what about the circumstances that led to crime? I think we should try to have fellow-feeling for all people, you big bully.

And thus ends the section on crime with 2 people of color (a robber and a forger, a woman and a half (a traitorous vixen and an implied rape victim), and a group of early labor agitators who may or may not have been bad guys. So far, not a great representation, Time Life.

Andrews, Evan. "10 Things You May Not Know About the Pinkertons." History. August 22, 2018.

"Reverand Charles H. Parkhurst." Oxford Academic, [Courtesy Wiiliston Northampton School Archives.] April 25, 2016. 

"Rose O'Neal Greenhow." American Battlefield Trust, 2020. 

Wells Fargo History & Museum in San Francisco, August 24, 2009.