New-York tribune., 1922-07-16

sioned polieeman's sad bird. That's me-"
rh;s from Francis Cadell, lately retired
..esr thirty-eight years service on the New
var. City police force. Cadets intimates
s.va wondered at his prolonged absence from
IA haunts Now the secret is out l found
~, going over pile of notebooks, each one
slad from cover to cover with references to
nersons and events Of departed day. There
~ 400 Of the little books. They date from
1881.
~ don't know what I'll do with all this
;n,ke remarked Cadell, whimsically. MAY
/. mi write my "reminiscences. A wise doc
.or once said that man is only as old as he
s.elss he pursued. "If that's true I'm not
mare than thirty, though my birth certificate
.sls different tale. I'm in the prime of life
spst rampin' wild bull mate as one of Mr..
yipling's heroes puts it, but off the roll call
not responsible to anybody except the missus
cod save her, for my comings and goings
IN, free to lie abed mornings, if can, which
| can't: free to do as I please theoretically,
b,t actually-why, say, I'm cop the same as
ever.
any thoughts run back over the years They
v-sre filed with experiences, some pleasant,
many unpleasant. Scores of men and women
! have known, classed as criminals, were
realv victims of unfortunate association Once
tagged, there was no use their trying to be
straight. It is hard even now for a person
once convicted to escape that stigma or live
Il down. 1t used to be harder years ago.
Fewer organizations worked for regeneration
Of the fallen. The way was easy for crooks
4. ~, Il
curing dishonest service.
MANY goried in criminal cleverness Those
we're professionals. They were all sorts
lawyers, doctors, writers, bankers, people who
started right, maybe, but picked the wrong
road at crossing and never found the way
back-maybe they never tried to.
"0ne tine along about 1889, l almost
cult police work for opera. / had barytone
voice and took some training at the Metropol-
tan College of Music. was there with Frank
Potter, son of Bishop Henry Goldman Potter
Bishop Potter gave me an autographed copy
of one Of his books called The Gates of the
East | still have it.
4 sure did want to sing in OPERA" grinned
the ex-detectlve, "but my father, who was
Olicenan in New York twenty-six years, ad-
Used me not to go rainbow chasing. Maybe the
I'D man was right. I don't suppose Caruso's
laurels would have been endangered. Just
the same I once shook hands with Emma
Eames and showed Nine. Melba and Jean de
Reszke through the Tenderloin Francis Will
son offered to try me out in SErminie,' but
hats the nearest I ever got to singing in
opera.
One Of my earliest assignments was to get
JEFF Sanders, coffee-colored crook who shot
Ind killed two patrolmen after police parade.
H tried to kill Captain lightning Charlie
HDonald and Mac got him. Sanders was
operating at the time in hotels There had
seen several robberies Of guests at the St.
Denis Hotel, Eleventh Street and Broadway,
then resort of the fashionable
When Sanders tackled the ST. Denis he
made mistake because he attracted the at
ention of Inspector Byrnes. The old man or
dered him got dead or alive Staying at the
hotel then, l recall, were Roscoe Conkling,
Thomas c. Platt, Silas Clayton, of President
Ceveand's staff; Postmaster Cornelius Van
Cott Mary Anderson, who soon afterward be-
came Mrs. Navarro; Lord ST. Leonards, the
Marquis Of Waterford and lot more distin-
galshed men and women from the South.
Sanders's gang included some of the hand
sonest 'yaller gals that ever came out of the
ooah All were dangerous criminals Among
mem was Alice Martin, confidence woman,
WIN London and Paris record, known in
new York as the Black Venus though she
was really olive She is said to have posed
ABROAD as an Oriental princess. They tabled
ner at Scotland Yard as Congo Clara The
martin woman with Nellie Curtin, alias
4exas NelP; May Munro, a star at the badger
galne-Sanderss reputed wife; Dolly Palmer.
ana last, but not least, Nellie Russell, known
Oy ner works to every hotel man in New York,
ieaped harvest in the Tenderloin.
ihere are no colored crooks of their type
IN New York now. Nearly all these women
anu many more whose names have slipped my
memory were light skinned and handsome
enough to pose as Spanish or French. Many
spoke =, the languages of both those countries.
iney were intelligent, well dressed, capable of
AlSlng in any gathering, and bold operators.
arrested Nellie Russell myself. That girl
s0u,a strip rounder of everything but his
sselasneS on casual acquaintance. Nellie
s0nleumes posed as a Spaniard. Again she'd
70 70 tne Countess of Something. Speaking Span
=. .'a ana French f1uently she managed to break
.l'O society now and then. After she got set
suuebodVss 49, yuLav