The Black Hills union and western stock review. [volume] (Rapid City, S.D.) 1904-19??, 1905-02-17
All Ono to Her.

ANY old game, with enough in it,
was good enough for Ella during the
quarte@ OF Il century that She was
playing them both ends from the mid
die and coming and going-shoplift
on 4 toppy plane spark grating for
the bigS ones, straight dip work in
crowds, laying down the queer or bogus
checks, running SWaggcr fence, skin
ming marks at cards, stringng along
with the green goods people, smuggl-
ing; 1t was all one to Ella, so long
as the coin WAS in sight. | don't be-
lieNc that I'm going too far in saving
that size probably picked UP more
money during her active career than
any criminal, man or woman, in Amer
lean police history.
Nobody ever succeeded in getting
Ella Mayhem To give up anything
about her connections or her early life,
but she was brought up in Cleveland
that much she admitted | remember
hey as a handsome and curiously gifted
woman away back in the seventies
That was after she had deliberately
embarked, With her eyes wide open,
cpon criminal career.
Ella began in Cleveland as a shop.
litter She didn't go in for the trinket
stuff, but made expensive laces her
graft. Being new and lacking expert
cnce. they nailed her in Cleveland. but
she slipped out by framing up a swell
sympathy dodge.
Queen Ella could manipulate the
prosecuted and martyred female stunt
in a way that would put a lump in the
throat of a mummilled mound builder,
and Duse the emotional Italian
actress, never saw the day or night
that she could turn on the spigot and
cxude so many hot, crystalline tears as
Ella Mayhem could when Ella got it
figured out that it was going to be her
li,,, u
play. | once saw her make notori-
ous!y hard and vindictive Brooklyn
judge blow his nose ferociously and
turn her loose by springing her little
scientific weep play on him at the psy.
Geological moment, ana this, toe when
/ she had been nailed with the goods all
| over her. IF, instead Of becoming a
class A crook. Ella had gone upon the
stage. she would nave picked up the
sobby parts and run away with them.
! New York Next.
! when Ella clambered out of her
i first little mess in Cleveland she made
! up her mind that the Lake Erie town
| wasn't roomy enough for her, and so
| she made for the main burg over the
/ way from i1oboken and Jersey City.
! she was a magnificent locker, with all
| kinds of the society manne.. and when
| she started in to shred the New York
/ shops the game came her way with q
4 rattle.
She was the very first woman TO put
I through the kleptonaniac frameup in
4 this country. She had about looted the
4 lace departments Of lot of New York
/ stores, including several cute hauls a,
A. r. Stewards establishment, where
laceS werefa speciality, before she was
naDbed through an accident, a bolt OF
/ expensive lace slipping to the floor
4 from one of her cavern pockets.
/ ELLA fixed up a beautiful faint in the
1 office, to which She was summoned By
the manager of the store and reduce
/ the members of the firm TO tender sym.
/ pathy by a recital of how the habit o.
Unfortunately taking things had grown
upon her. The upshot was that they
! asked her, for her own sake, and FOL
the sake of the family to be good-anc
! let her go Ella then decided that lift
! ing f. ON the counters involved to,
| much personally encountered risk, ant
that there really wasn't enough in ii
anyhow, for woman of her adroit
ness.
The things that she then proceeded
70 do around New York off and on, 70
2 good many years, kept the headquar
ters staff on the move.
A Clever Trick.
For another thing, she was the frs
crook, mar on woman, 10 pull off tn
sliding a.Ireau drawer game in the an
rexing of diamonds. She rented
4 couple OF communicating rooms in
big New York hotel nfter registerin,
S