The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-04-10
THE CRIMINAL.
GA True Sfory.) BY FRANK BARKLEY COspLEY.

BY FRANK BARKLEY C0PLEY. Copyright, 1906, by Joseph B. Bowles In the course of his career. Skinny had been a pickpocket, thug. sneak thief and burglar. He had also killed his mana detective. Nearly twenty years of his life had been spent in prison.
 He was now thirty-five years old He was born in a tenement house down near the Battery in New York city.
 At the tender age of seven. Skinny was sent to the Catholic pretectory In Westchester for tapping the till in a bakery. There he met a boy about year older than himself who was in for picking pockets. His name was Tommy Tobin.
 Before they were eighteen they had been repeatedly imprisoned. and were classed by the police among New York's most dangerous criminals Skinny was barely twenty-one when he tripped up a detective who was chasing a pickpocket. The detective blackened his eyes and punched his nose out of joint, and three days later Skinny attacked him in the street with a knife. At first 1t was thought the detective would recover and Skinny pleading guilty to felonious assault got off with a sentence to four years in Sing Sing. Soon after he went up his victim died; but Skinny could not now be prosecuted for murder, and so ho escaped the gallows.
 After that the police bounded him more than ever Once six detectives got him in a cell at police headquar- ters and pounded him within an inch of his life: then he was sent back to Sing Sing on a trumped-up charge of grand larceny. During that term he spent two weeks in the cooler" or dark cell. for cursing the keeper, and that Is how he developed his lumbago
 Whatever may be said about Sing Sing today. its conditions at that time certainly was not conducive to the development of athletes, neither was 1t a place where men were likely to be filled with the joy of living Skin- nys lumbago steadily grew worse; hls sullen stoicism began to yield: and it was in the spring of 1896 that he with two years more to serve. and no prospect beyand that but more hound ing by the police. finally gave way to the despair that was gripping his soul and began to hoard his morphine tab lets. The prison physician gave him now and then a little morphine tc relieve his sufferings.
 Be careful how you use the tablets the doctor had said one day. twenty will kill a man."
 one two. three four. five, six seven. eight"-slowly Skinny counted his little flat pills-''ten. twelve. four, teen-sixteen." Only four more. and he would have ready to hand an easy escape from his sufferings.
 One that very day a new era dawneo for Sing Sing. Mrs. Maud Ballingtor Booth came there to begin the work of the Volunteer Prison League. She had a theory that if convicts were treated, not as wild animals, but as human beings they would respond that what was needed in the case oi the great majority of confirmed crimi' nals was little sympathy and love Her ideas amused the prison officials bu;, believing she had only to tes her theory to be convinced of Its i'm practicability, they agreed that thu TOO prisoners should be assembled 1T the chapel on Sunday, May 24. 1888 to hear her talk.
 The scene was a strange one. IT the body of the chapel sat the 7oC men in stripes, their faces shaven their hair closely cropped. most o them debased, vicious, vile whilt about them lowered their armed anC vigilant keepers. On the platform