Читать книгу The New York Tombs Inside and Out!. Scenes and Reminiscences Coming Down to the Present. A Story Stranger Than Fiction, with an Historic Account of America's Most Famous Prison онлайн

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Every afternoon when the visitors had gone, keepers and inmates in various parts of the prison sat down and boldly “picked out” the winners of the races. And some made “books.” Then an official would be dispatched to a pool room opposite the Criminal Court Building, said to be over Tom Foley’s gin mill. This kind of gambling was kept up in the Tombs daily, Sundays excepted, for years under Tammany Hall. The prisoners saw the officials gamble and they in turn made “pools” and sent their money where it could do the most good.

This gambling became such a nuisance that it became known on the outside. A gentleman well known around the Criminal Court Building told me afterwards that to make sure of the rumor he sent a betting “commissioner” to the pool room over Tom Foley’s saloon and he waited there till the Tombs runner came and laid several bets on the ponies.

When I saw how the poor unfortunates were being robbed and ruined, by the prison gamblers, I made bold to go to Lantry and asked him to stop it. I saw at once that I touched him, for he got red in the face. He called Warden Flynn over the telephone and gave him a “roasting.” What he said after I left the room, I have no idea, but when I reached the Tombs I found that some persons had been struck by a cyclone. Thanks to Mr. Lantry, the regular pool room messenger had been “fired” to Blackwells Island and for several weeks the gamblers in the prison went out of business. But in a short time the crooked work went on as brisk as ever. At any rate, I relieved my conscience of a painful duty in the matter and stopped the mean business for a season. I wish now that I had called on Mr. Jerome and he might have sent the “bunch” to the Penitentiary.