I have taken liberties with the historical dates of this abusive practice. By the time of our tale, in the late 1880s, the practice of children being exploited as street musicians in New York City had mostly been halted. Since flash photography had not been invented when these “child dens” were active, there are no photographs, so far as I know, showing their interiors. Thus, the incident where Rocco takes the camera into his own hands is entirely fictionalized.
The character of Rocco’s padrone, Giovanni Ancarola, is based on an actual person. In the fall of 1879, the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was alerted by Italian officials that a man named Antonio Giovanni Ancarola was about to arrive in the United States with seven boys. Soon after, Ancarola was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison. The boys had been indentured for four-year terms, with their parents receiving between sixteen and thirty-two dollars a year.
Readers may wonder if padroni actually scarred the street musicians. A July 22, 1873, New York Times article about child street musicians reported that “it has been discovered that but few of the boys are without a brand of some kind by which they can be recognized.
“Many of them wore a diagonal cut on either the right or left side of the upper lip, which has been purposely made and sewed up again in a rough manner, so that the scar will always remain. Others have their under lip split in the centre, and a permanent scar is secured in the same manner. These cuts about the mouth are the most preferable style of brand, because to the casual observer they present nothing unnatural, as the marks may be readily taken as the result of an accident.”
The social reformer Henry Bergh, another historical figure who appears in our story, is remembered for his commitment to helping both children and animals. In 1864, after years of witnessing animal cruelty during travels in Europe, Bergh stopped in England to consult with leaders of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which had been founded in 1824.
Back home in New York, Bergh contacted wealthy people to obtain their support for his Declaration of the Rights of Animals. Thanks to his campaign, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was established on April 10, 1866. Today we celebrate April as Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Month.
Henry Bergh’s success in animal rights led to his involvement in the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. In 1873, Bergh and a lawyer for the ASPCA, Elbridge Gerry, helped to bring attention to the situation of an abused girl known simply as Mary Ellen. When the case went before a judge, Jacob Riis was in the courtroom to write about it. You can read about this landmark case on the ASPCA’s website (see the “Reading and Resources” section). Bergh and Gerry subsequently worked to found the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which was established on April 27, 1875, and served as its vice presidents.
In researching A Bandit’s Tale, I had the pleasure of visiting that organization’s headquarters and viewing some of its first annual reports, which document the successful effort to prosecute Ancarola. I also spent time at the Museum of the City of New York, where I was able to read many letters that Bergh wrote to city officials advocating better roads and water fountains for horses. He was definitely persistent! It’s no wonder he earned the nickname the Great Meddler.
In the nineteenth century, horses were primarily thought of as living machines. The plight of workhorses received further attention in 1877, when a British author named Anna Sewell published her only novel, Black Beauty. (The novel is available to read free online.) In real life, as in our story, the book was a favorite with readers like Mary Hallanan. It became an immediate success on both sides of the Atlantic.
HISTORICAL FIGURES AND INSTITUTIONS (AND A PARADE)
While historical figures, institutions, and events make appearances in A Bandit’s Tale, the book is a work of fiction. When characters speak, their dialogue is invented. Below you will find short biographies of actual people, as well as some brief information on real organizations, that appear in the story.
ANTONIO GIOVANNI ANCAROLA was tried in 1879 by the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which Henry Bergh helped to establish. While that is fact, I have imagined Ancarola’s description, character, and actions in A Bandit’s Tale.
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HENRY BERGH (1813–1888) was born in New York City, the son of a wealthy shipyard owner. After inheriting part of his father’s fortune, he and his wife, Matilda, traveled extensively in Europe. He began his crusade for the rights of animals in February 1866 and served as the voice of the ASPCA from its founding in April 1866 until his death twenty-two years later. The man known as the Great Meddler passed away early on the morning of March 12, 1888, in the midst of the Great Blizzard of 1888. (You can read more about this famous storm in Jim Murphy’s Blizzard!; see the “Reading and Resources” section.)
Bergh’s obituary in the New York Times relates one incident that helped inspire a scene in A Bandit’s Tale. During one winter storm, when the slush was ankle-deep, Bergh and some of his followers gathered where several horse-drawn streetcar lines merged. “Henry Bergh gave orders to take from the tracks every horse that had an ailment or a sore. The condition of the wretched animals attached to the cars at that time was notoriously bad.”
As a result, the lines virtually shut down, sending passengers into the street. “Thousands of people had to foot it up town in the rain and the slush, growling, cursing, hungry, wet, and mad. ‘Who did this?’ was the angry question asked on all sides, and to this came but one reply, ‘Bergh,’ and the public at last discovered that he and his society had developed into a mighty power.”
GERARDO FERRI and his wife, Michelina, bought the first piano in Calvello in 1879. It was brought up by mules and became a status symbol for one of the most important landowning families in the hill town. The character and actions of Signor Ferri in this story are entirely fictionalized, with no relation to the real historical figure or his family.
MAX FISCHEL (1863–1939), a Jewish newspaperman born in Prague, came to America at age four and grew up on Houston Street in New York, near the police headquarters on Mulberry Street mentioned in our story. Called a “natural-born reporter,” Fischel got his start in newspaper work as a messenger boy. As he does in A Bandit’s Tale, Max Fischel served as Riis’s guide to Jewish neighborhoods, helping to persuade people to share their stories and have their photographs taken for the first time.
MICHAEL HALLANAN (c. 1847–1926), the Greenwich Village Blacksmith, actually did invent a special rubber horseshoe pad. Hallanan lived near Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village; you can still see his initials on one of the buildings he owned on Barrow Street. In his obituary in the New York Times, the blacksmith is also credited with suggesting that the triangle at the intersection of Barrow Street, West Fourth Street, and Washington Place be named in honor of the Civil War cavalry leader General Philip Sheridan. Hallanan came from Galway, Ireland; he died at the age of seventy-nine and was survived by four children, one of them named Mary. The words and actions of Mick Hallanan in this story are imagined.
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JACOB A. RIIS (1849–1914) was a Danish immigrant and pioneering American journalist. In 1888, after learning how to take flash pictures, he began gathering photographs and stories for his lectures on the plight of people in the tenements. According to one biographer, while snowbound during the Great Blizzard of 1888, Riis hatched the idea to reach more people by writing a book. He sent in a title description to the U.S. Copyright Office on March 19, 1888. Destined to become one of the most influential books of its time, How the Other Half Lives was published in 1890.
Riis’s stories about the gold locket and his dog being killed are included in his autobiography, The Making of an American (1901), which is available through Project Gutenberg.
The NEW YORK HOUSE OF REFUGE, the first public institution in America to deal with juvenile delinquents, was established in 1825. It also housed
orphans. The House of Refuge on Randall’s Island opened in 1854. There was a large building for boys, serving several hundred children, and a smaller one for girls. It closed in 1935. While Rocco’s escape is imagined, I borrowed from the reports of several (mostly unsuccessful) escapes published through the years in the New York Times.
The FIRST WORKHORSE PARADE in New York City, with twelve hundred entries, actually took place in 1907, as part of the effort to improve the treatment of horses. The first parade in London was held in 1886, while Boston was the site of the first U.S. event, in 1903. The tradition continues to this day in England.
HOW TO TALK LIKE A THIEF
For the details of the pickpocket scenes in this story, I relied on the historian Timothy J. Gilfoyle’s A Pickpocket’s Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York, a study of the pickpocket George Appo. I also took many details from the first-person account of a New York City thief named Jim Caulfield, who was interviewed by the journalist Hutchins Hapgood. Hapgood recorded Caulfield’s story of his life of crime in a 1903 book titled The Autobiography of a Thief. Here are some phrases straight from the horse’s mouth.
Bang a super: Steal a man’s watch by detaching it from the chain; may also be called “get a man’s front”
Blow: Take alarm
Breech-getting: Picking a man’s pocket (as opposed to moll-buzzing)
Copper: Policeman
Dip or Pick: Person who actually picks someone’s pocket; may also be called a “wire”
Graft/Grafter: Thievery/Thief
Hoisting: Shoplifting
Leather: Wallet or pocketbook
Make a touch: Pick a pocket
Moll-buzzing: Stealing from women
Mouthpiece: Lawyer
Pen or Stir: Penitentiary/Jail
Pinched: Arrested
Plunder: Money or stolen object
Rattler: Streetcar
Sneak thief: Thief who sneaks into houses to steal; a burglar
Spring/Fall money: Money set aside to bribe a policeman or pay a lawyer to help “spring” a thief from jail; this savings is sometimes also called “fall money” because it is set aside in the event of a “fall” (arrest)
Squeal: Tell on someone
Stall: Person who creates a distraction to hide what the dip is doing
Sucker: Victim
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READING AND RESOURCES
BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS
Bial, Raymond. Tenement: Immigrant Life on the Lower East Side. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002.
Freedman, Russell. Kids at Work: Lewis Hine and the Crusade Against Child Labor. Photographs by Lewis Hine. New York: Clarion Books, 1994.
Hopkinson, Deborah. A Boy Called Dickens. Illustrations by John Hendrix. New York: Schwartz & Wade Books, 2012.
———. Shutting Out the Sky: Life in the Tenements of New York, 1880–1924. New York: Orchard Books, 2003.
Kirby, Matthew J. The Clockwork Three. New York: Scholastic, 2010.
Loeper, John J. Crusade for Kindness: Henry Bergh and the ASPCA. New York: Atheneum, 1991.
Murphy, Jim. Blizzard! The Storm That Changed America. New York: Scholastic, 2000.
Napoli, Donna Jo. The King of Mulberry Street. New York: Wendy Lamb Books, 2005.
Sewell, Anna. Black Beauty: The Autobiography of a Horse. London: Jarrold and Sons, 1877. (Numerous reprinteditions are available, and the book also can be read through Project Gutenberg.)
ONLINE RESOURCES
“ASCPA April: Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Month,” ASPCA, aspca.org/get-involved/aspca-april.
“The 1834 Thomas Cox House—No. 17 Barrow Street,” blog entry by Daytonian in Manhattan, daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-1834-thomas-cox-house-no-17-barrow.xhtml. This blog includes photos of the building where Michael Hallanan ran his horseshoeing operation.
“Founding and Early History,” New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, nyspcc.org/about/history.
“Henry Bergh: Angel in Top Hat or the Great Meddler?,” blog entry by Tammy Kiter, New-York Historical Society Museum & Library, blog.nyhistory.org/henry-bergh-angel-in-top-hat-or-the-great-meddler.
“Light,” How We Got to Now with Steven Johnson, PBS, pbs.org/how-we-got-to-now/home. This episode includes a demonstration of techniques of flash photography used by Jacob Riis.
The London Harness Horse Parade, Amazon Instant Video, amazon.com/The-London-Harness-Horse-Parade/dp/B004P0UVAK. A documentary of the 2003 event; shorter videos are available free on YouTube.
“The London Harness Horse Parade,” London Harness Horse Parade Society, lhhp.co.uk.
“Virtual Tour,” Lower East Side Tenement Museum, tenement.org/Virtual_Tour/index_virtual.xhtml.
BOOKS OF GENERAL INTEREST
Alland, Alexander, Sr. Jacob A. Riis: Photographer and Citizen. Millerton, New York: Aperture, 1974.
Anbinder, Tyler. Five Points: The 19th-Century New York City Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World’s Most Notorious Slum. New York: Plume, 2002.
Beers, Diane L. For the Prevention of Cruelty: The History and Legacy of Animal Rights Activism in the United States. Athens: Ohio University Press / Swallow Press, 2006.
Buk-Swienty, Tom. The Other Half: The Life of Jacob Riis and the World of Immigrant America. Translated by Annette Buk-Swienty. New York: W. W. Norton, 2008.
Gilfoyle, Timothy J. A Pickpocket’s Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York. New York: W. W. Norton, 2006.
Hapgood, Hutchins. The Autobiography of a Thief. New York: Fox, Duffield, 1903.
McNeill, J. R. The Mountains of the Mediterranean World: An Environmental History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
McShane, Clay, and Joel A. Tarr. The Horse in the City: Living Machines in the Nineteenth Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.
Riis, Jacob A. How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1890.
———. The Making of an American. New York: Macmillan, 1901.
Tak, Herman. South Italian Festivals: A Local History of Ritual and Change. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2000.
Zucchi, John E. The Little Slaves of the Harp: Italian Child Street Musicians in Nineteenth-Century Paris, London, and New York. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992.
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SOURCE NOTES
EPIGRAPHS
“Long ago it was said…”: Riis, Jacob, and Luc Sante. How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York. New York: Penguin Books, 1997. Print 5.
“ ‘Do you know why…’ ”: Sewell, Anna. Black Beauty: The Autobiography of a Horse. 1877. Project Gutenberg, 16 Jan 2006. n.p. Web. 24 Feb 2015.
“I have counted…”: Bergh, Henry. Letter. New York Times, Dec 26, 1871. Web.
CHAPTER 23
“The first place that I can well remember…”: Sewell, Black Beauty, n.p.
BOOK FOUR
“With appetite ground to keenest edge…”: Riis, How the Other Half Lives, 137.
CHAPTER 27
“Men are strongest…”: Sewell, Black Beauty, n.p.
CHAPTER 31
“…young Italian children are now suffering…”: “Children as Slaves,” New York Times, June 17, 1873.
“…not to come home without…”: Ibid.
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
“I am an American, Chicago born…”: Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March, with an introduction by Christopher Hitchens (New York: Viking Press, 1953; New York: Penguin Books, 2003), 1.
“This is the place…”: Charles Dickens, American Notes for General Circulation and Pictures from Italy (London: Chapman & Hall, 1913; Project Gutenberg, 1996), n.p.
“ ‘…because I was trying…’ ”: Buk-Swi
enty, The Other Half, 245.
“…it has been discovered that…”: “The Italian Slaves,” New York Times, July 22, 1873.
“Henry Bergh gave orders…”: “Death of Henry Bergh,” New York Times, March 13, 1888.
“Thousands of people had to foot…”: Ibid.
PICTURE CREDITS
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following:
fm.1: Library of Congress, The Terminal, Reproduction No. LC-USZ62-73931; tp.1, p4.1: Museum of the City of New York, Jacob A. Riis Collection, Bandit’s Roost, 59½ Mulberry Street, 90.13.4.104; fm2.1: New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Fifth Annual Report, 1880; p1.1, p1.2: Library of Congress, Mulberry Street, Reproduction No. LC-DIG-det-4a08193; p2.1: Library of Congress, The close of a career in New York, LC-DIG-det-4a09038; p2.2: Museum of the City of New York, House of Refuge, Randall’s Island, 91.69.181; p3.1, bm1.7: Library of Congress, New York City, Blizzard of 1888, Reproduction No. LC-USZ62-43668; p3.2: Library of Congress, Winter—Fifth Avenue, Reproduction No. LC-USZ62-96557; p4.2: Museum of the City of New York, Jacob A. Riis Collection, Street Arabs in sleeping quarters, 90.13.4.126; p4.3: Museum of the City of New York, Jacob A. Riis Collection, Police Station Lodgers 13. Elizabeth Street Station— Women Lodgers, 90.12.1.241; epl.2: Library of Congress, The crowded car, Reproduction No. LC-USZ62-63031; bm1.1: Library of Congress, Italian neighborhood with street market, Mulberry Street, Reproduction No. LC-DIG-det-4a27271; bm1.2: Library of Congress, Watering horses on a hot day, Reproduction No. LC-USZ62-49241; bm1.3: Library of Congress, Henry Bergh, Reproduction No. LC-USZ62-120912; bm1.4: Library of Congress, Jacob Riis, Reproduction No. LC-USZ62-5511; bm1.5: Library of Congress, The Street, Reproduction No. LC-USZ62-61382; bm1.6: Library of Congress, Horse-drawn streetcar no. 148 of a New York City System, Reproduction No.: LC-USZ62-67871.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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