The trials of Quimbo Appo -- Urchins, Arabs, and gutter-snipes -- A house of refuge at sea -- Appo on: violence -- Factories for turning out criminals -- The "guns" of Gotham -- Drafted -- Opium dens and Bohemia -- The old homestead -- The dives -- Appo on: Jack Collins -- Tombs justice -- Appo on: Good fellows -- Fences -- "That galling yoke of servitude" -- Danny Driscoll and the Whyos -- Eastern State Penitentiary -- Green goods -- Appo on: Jersey City -- Poughkeepsie -- Appo on: Stealing guys -- The Lexow Committee -- In the tenderloin -- A marked man -- Buried alive -- A genuine reformation
Summary
A Pickpocket's Tale is a fascinating true-crime story. Gilfoyle uses George Appo's unpublished memoirs to re-create the world of the nineteenth-century criminal in astonishing detail. George Appo was half Irish, half Chinese who became a pickpocket at the tender age of twelve. he was first arrested at age fourteen and sentenced to a year on a prison ship for juvenile offenders served . In and out of prisons, he became an expert pickpocket, making hundreds of dollars a night--the annual wage of a skilled laborer. By his early twenties he was a regular patron of New York's opium and prostitution dens. But despite many years in prison and being wounded several times he managed to die of old age at age seven-four
