CRIME IN NEW YORK.

Evening Star, Issue 4158, 24 June 1876, Page 4

CRIME IN NEW YORK.

The 'Daily Telegraph's' correspondent, writing from JSesv York, says : " An extraordinary prevalence of crime might, at first sight, seem to bear some relation to the tenible distress which undoubtedly exists in this city and its immediate neighborhood. After dusk you are accosted at almost every corner by men who plead that they are starving, the majority of whom give evidence that mendicancy is to them a new vocation. Persons made desperate by hunger and cold might, one would think, be easily tempted to the commission of crime. But the daring offences that come to light are, with scarcely an exception, the work• of habitual criminals, whose audacity may, perhaps, be traced to the impunity they have long joyed. Hardly a night passes without fobberies which startle us by their daring. Masked men force an entrance into apartments where only women are found, and with pistol in hand coolly ransaok drawers and cupboards in search of valuables. One such case occurred in a respectable and thicklypopulated neighborhood in broad daylight, and another before ten at night -—the husband in the latter case having barely left his dwelling before the thief made his appearance. In another instance, in Union Square, a lady was bound hand and foot, and compelled to give information for the guidance of the thieves. These are examples of a class that might be multiplied indefinitely—the thieves uniformly escaping with their booty, and leaving no due to their identity. A supposition popular among foreigners is that every American goes armed to the teeth. The traveller who imagined that he had but to journey to the city of Buffalo to enjoy a buffalo hunt only exemplified an ignorance that is still too. common. A young fellow from Manchester, whom I met the other day on Broadway, had the handle of a pistol peeping ou{; of one pocket; and underneath his overooat a belt, with a Sheffield bowie knife. He had understood that these were essential parts of his equipment for a trip up the great thoroughfare of New York. But the street robberies that have been heard of, and the greater number of burglaries, show that the average American citizen hereabouts is rarely armed with anything more formidable than a cane. Rowdies and gamblers, and so on, carry weapons, of course, but people generally think of nothing of the sort. In.rural pla< • the posi e;fiion of arms is more common. ' A robbery in Long.lsland not long ago ended in the shooting of two burglars, and in a burglary in a Hudson river village, one of the party, who was 1 laying the part of stock pigeon at the instance of the police, was shot and killed. A few moire occurences like th'e&> will' chefcV the, boWnesß of a r,uflsaujy* elate for wfcob machinery of justice his no terxboß." |