The Project Gutenberg EBook of True Stories of Crime From the District
Attorney's Office, by Arthur Train

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Title: True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office

Author: Arthur Train

Release Date: August 13, 2004 [EBook #13172]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRUE CRIME STORIES ***

Produced by Steven desJardins and Distributed Proofreaders.

With them and all they had, 'twas lightly come and lightly go; and
when we left them my master said to me: "This is thy first lesson,
but to-night we shall be at Hamburgh. Come with me to the 'rotboss'
there, and I'll show thee all our folk and their lays, and
especially 'the loseners,' 'the dutzers,' 'the schleppers.'" ...
"Enow!" cried I, stopping him, "art as gleesome as the evil one
a-counting of his imps. I'll jot down in my tablet all these
caitiffs and their accursed names; for knowledge is knowledge. But
go among them alive or dead, that I will not with my good will."

--THE CLOISTER AND THE HEARTH.

TRUE STORIES OF CRIME
FROM THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S OFFICE

BY ARTHUR TRAIN

FORMERLY DISTRICT ATTORNEY
NEW YORK COUNTY

1908

PREFACE

The narratives composing this book are literally true stories of crime.
In a majority of the cases the author conducted the prosecutions
himself, and therefore may claim to have a personal knowledge of that
whereof he speaks. While no confidence has been abused, no essential
facts have been omitted, distorted, or colored, and the accounts
themselves, being all matters of public record, may be easily verified.

The scenes recorded here are not literature but history, and the
characters who figure in them are not puppets of the imagination, but
men and women who lived and schemed, laughed, sinned and suffered, and
paid the price when the time came, most of them, without flinching. A
few of those who read these pages may profit perhaps by their example;
others may gain somewhat in their knowledge of life and human nature;
but all will agree that there are books in the running brooks, even if
the streams be turbid, and sermons in stones, though