Red, Happy Hooligan, and Little Dick: The Bad Kids of Old San Francisco

We lament the behavior of the youth of today, but what about the youngsters of yesteryear? Friends, they were just as bad. Between the Gold Rush and the Great Quake, kids in San Francisco stole purses, toys, and guns. Yes, guns. Kids those days…

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeart Radio Simon.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Yes, oh hey, I know you.

Speaker 3 (00:08):
You know it's ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
I do. Oh yeah, Okay. Do you ever watch the
Inside the Actors Studio? Yes, Like they had that guy
with the beard, you know, the kind of pompous guy,
James Lipston. He had asked people like, when you arrive
at Heaven, what do you want to hear? That's your
favorite customer? As like, I think it's what the Pross questionnaire?
Proust questionnaire. Yeah, right, So did you know that that
guy was a pimp. Yeah, he was a legit pimp.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
He was a pimp.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
I'm not being like, oh I think that guy's the pimp. No,
he was a pimp. Like before he was up on
that stage teaching actors how to fake it. He was
a pimp. He said this to Parade magazine. Parade Parade
like the Sunday Like it's sexually you know, you get
shows up in Sunday paper. Yeah, in that that little like, hey,
what's what's that for?

Speaker 3 (00:51):
Guardfield?

Speaker 2 (00:51):
I'm gonna read this.

Speaker 3 (00:52):
The family Circus like entertainment.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
The Journals of Entertainment journalis. Yeah. So back in twenty thirteen,
They questioned him about it, and they said, and I quote,
is it true you are a pimp in Paris in
the nineteen fifties.

Speaker 3 (01:03):
A Parisian pimp.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Yes, Elizabeth, And he.

Speaker 3 (01:06):
Said, and I.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Quote, I was. It was only a few years after
the war. Paris was different than still poor men couldn't
get jobs, and in the male chauvinus Paris of that time,
the woman couldn't get work at all. It was perfectly
respectable for them to go into le milieu. Now, so
the person's like prostitution, He's like, young women desperately needed
money for various reasons. They were beautiful and young and extraordinary.

(01:31):
There was no oprobrium because it was completely regulated. Every
week they had to be inspected medically. The great bordellos
were still flourishing in those days before the Sheriff of Paris,
a woman, closed them down. It was a different time.
And the person's like, how did your involvement come about?
You became friends with one of the prostitutes, Like what
went down with He's like, oh, we became great friends.

(01:53):
When I ran out of money, I said I have
to go home, and she said, no, you don't, I'll
arrange it. For you, So she arranged for me to
do it. I had to be okayed by the underworld,
otherwise they would have found me floating in the sand.
So he's apparently pimp ocade and pimp approved by the
French underworld own. So he's like the persons like did
you have like a fleet of girls, or you got
like a stable? Or like how many thoroughbreds were talking here?

(02:14):
He's like, did you represent more than one girl? That
was actual? Quote, yes, a whole bordello. I represented them
all but her especially. Anyway, I did a roaring business
and I was able to live for a year. The
French mechs didn't exploit women the ch you know right,
They represented them like agents and they took a cut.

(02:34):
That's how I lived. I was going through my rights
of passage, no question about it. It was a great
year of my life.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
Interestingly, this man has been canceled. Surprising, right, Yeah, so
apparently sometimes the targets hit the right time. Anyway, he's
so proud in twenty thirteen to go off as an
old man. Let me tell you about me being a
pimp in Paris. You know I'm recording this, sir, This
is going to be and people's paper he thought.

Speaker 3 (03:01):
He was delighted. Yes, of course that is ridiculous. Do
you want to know what else is ridiculous?

Speaker 2 (03:07):
I am so here for.

Speaker 3 (03:08):
You kids stealing guns?

Speaker 4 (03:11):
Yeah, this is ridiculous.

Speaker 3 (03:33):
Crime A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists, and
cons It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one
hundred percent ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
No, you done heard that?

Speaker 3 (03:45):
Oh you know that. One of my favorite topics is
Old San Francisco. Yes, it is a barbary coasting.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
You're like, what's Elizabeth like? I'm like, what do you
know about Old San Francisco.

Speaker 3 (03:55):
Basically, it's like from the start of the gold rush,
of the Great Quake of six somewhere, you.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
Know, Yeah, they got fifty years.

Speaker 3 (04:02):
Around there, and it goes beyond my family connection to
that time. I'm fascinated by the boomtown mentality because it
draws people from all over the world looking to get rich.
It's like kind of what we have now, people coming
here to seek their fortunes and technology. And when you
have a frontier town and one that's on the very
edge of the continent that issues conventions and rules of

(04:25):
the ruling classes on the other side of the country.
It makes for interesting times.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
Oh, I got a nice contrast.

Speaker 3 (04:29):
So I mentioned the Barbary Coast. Yes, it was the
like red light district in old San Francisco, dance halls,
gambling duns, san Francisco's first jazz clubs.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
Yeah, so it's like basically North Beach a part of
the financial district.

Speaker 3 (04:41):
Yes, exactly. In Brothels it was a wild place full
of wild folks. When I say folks, I mean folks
of all ages. Yes, adults, seniors and of course children.

Speaker 2 (04:52):
Sar kids in there.

Speaker 3 (04:54):
Have I got some kids for you today? I would
imagine that you were a pretty rascally kid. I was
a I was not. No, are you surprised, But let's
let's start. Let's start with a little girl who was
more than a rascal. She was a criminal. She was
ahead of a criminal gang, and she was twelve years old.

(05:16):
Her name Mary Avery. So Mary was a member of
a gang that included John O'Keeffe age twelve, James McDonald
aged twelve, James Hopkins, age fifteen, Mary Sullivan aged fourteen,
and then holding up the caboose on this one, Mary Bowen,
aged ten so.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
These are all these are like some hardened criminals of
five six years longman under world.

Speaker 3 (05:40):
We got a John, two James's, and three Marys. They
didn't seem to have like a gang name. But Mary
Mary Avery gang leader.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
She Mary Avery Gang.

Speaker 3 (05:49):
She had a street name. She was known as Little Dick.
What Yeah, Little named after the old highwayman Dick Turpins Britain.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
Yeah. Can you hear about this cat?

Speaker 3 (06:00):
Yeah, so Little She's a little gang leader, a little
highway woman. So at the end of March of eighteen
seventy seven, the gang was dragged before a judge after
getting busted.

Speaker 2 (06:12):
Whole group.

Speaker 3 (06:14):
So the judge had to figure out, am I going
to send them off to the Industrial So I'm going to.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
Send the Avery Gang off to the Who's Camp.

Speaker 3 (06:19):
And you're like, Elizabeth, what the heck is the industrial What.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
Is the Industrial School?

Speaker 3 (06:22):
Lilizabeth, thank you for asking. Here's the side quest. So
the San Francisco Industrial School was this huge, huge facility
one hundred acres kind of near where City College of
San Francisco is to really hundred acres and there was
a huge building and then the rest was just land
for crops and they were grown tended, harvested, sent to
market by the kids that were sent.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
That's the good side of the city too, okay.

Speaker 3 (06:46):
Right, And so it was basically this is work camp.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
It wasn't like they're in the sand dunes out by
the water.

Speaker 3 (06:51):
And they had they had the farming aspect of it,
but then they also had like a cobbler and a tailor,
so they would make the shoes for themselves to wear. Yeah,
but they would produce so much that then they'd sell
it off to like other facilities, like I'm.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
Sure other schools, like yeah, Catholic schools or whatever exactly.

Speaker 3 (07:08):
So it's but it's run by a private organization.

Speaker 2 (07:10):
Oh, this is not it, Okay.

Speaker 3 (07:12):
Yeah. They took kids up to the age of eighteen,
and at one point they had two kids under the
age of five. We like four year olds in the
in the work camp. So it seems like so this
is like a juvenile hall for bad kids basically. But
I always what.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
We're getting back to this is our future five industrial
schools exactly.

Speaker 3 (07:34):
I kind of get the idea that, like in all
the contemporary articles that I read, that maybe this is
also a place to send a kid in order to
punish a deadbeat parent. Wait what so that?

Speaker 2 (07:44):
Yeah, Like, how is punishing the kid punishing the parent?
If they're a dead beet, they don't care.

Speaker 3 (07:48):
How is it helpful to work these kids.

Speaker 2 (07:50):
To the like not the poor house? This is not
an orphanage. This is just basically, we're going to make
some use of you. Yeah, and as a child and
your parents. Hope this'll piss them off too.

Speaker 3 (08:01):
Yeah, we're going to get you on the straight and narrow.
So Gary Kamaiya he's a great San Francisco writer and artist.
In twenty eighteen, he did a piece for the San
Francisco Chronicle about the Industrial School. Here's how he describes
the place. Quote the Industrial School was designed like a prison.
It was a three story, single wing building, with every
floor holding sixteen cells that were five and a half

(08:24):
feet by seven and a half feet. Each cell had
an iron bed that folded against the wall. Toilets at
the end of the hall. Spread quote an absolutely intolerable
stench through the building. Early visitors to the Industrial School
commented on the almost complete absence of educational facilities or
vocational training. The sole teacher sat behind a desk made

(08:46):
of a piece of plywood, resting on a barrel. The
children had to carry their benches and tables from the
dining room at the start of the school day. The
children's day began at five thirty am. After breakfast, they
were handed picks and shovels and march off to work
at the rear of the building, moving earth. They worked
until a food break at noon, then they were marched
back to dig some more until two thirty. From three

(09:08):
to five thirty they attended school. Supper was at six,
then more school from seven to eight thirty, bedtime at nine.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
Wow, tons of schooling. You said, there's three floors, sixteen
cells each floor. Yeah, it's like what forty eight, So
that's enough for like multiple classrooms, multiple moments, and they're
of different ages, and they have like an hour and
a half here, an hour and a half there schooling.

Speaker 3 (09:29):
Yeah, and so like the conditions are terrible. The kids were.

Speaker 2 (09:32):
Basically sixteen boys on a sixteen young boys on a toilet.

Speaker 3 (09:36):
At the time, it was co edh was co ed
right for a while there, and it was just assuming
so much violent punishment. So there was this huge investigation.
The public is disgusted by what they learned. As am
I and one of the articles quote it was reported
that one hundred men from Sacramento were ready to come
down to San Francisco, tear down the building and hang

(09:56):
the superintendent.

Speaker 2 (09:58):
Yeah, so they're like back in the day.

Speaker 3 (10:01):
Eighteen seventy two, the city of San Francisco took over.
This is what Gary, Where is that energy now, Elizabeth?
I know? Quote. Sixty three girls were transferred to the
Magdalen Asylum at twenty first in Potrero, which a Catholic
group had originally opened as a shelter for former prostitutes,
but the new arrivals were so rebellious that the sisters

(10:21):
had to house them in separate quarters, fearing they would
corrupt the Magdalens.

Speaker 2 (10:26):
Wait, they were worried the young girls are going to
corrupt the former prostitutes.

Speaker 3 (10:29):
Yes, exactly, So this is what we're talking about, bad
kids in old San Francisco.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
Oh my god. Yeah, we got to get these girls
away from these four sex workers.

Speaker 3 (10:39):
Let's go back to little Dick in her gang in
front of the judge. So only Hopkins and Bowen hadn't
been busted before Little Dick frequent flyer in the justice.

Speaker 2 (10:51):
Yes, I'm talking about she's up there they got a
picture of her beyond the judge.

Speaker 3 (10:55):
Ray Alexander wrote for KQD quote after one arrest, police
discovered that Avery was so dedicated stealing she wore customized
dresses specifically designed for the purpose. Avery cut holes in
her pockets and doubled up the petticoats underneath in order
to take and conceal objects without detection. Very forty elephants.

Speaker 2 (11:14):
Totally, So she basically cut holes in her pockets, had
to drop into like a sealed up Yeah.

Speaker 3 (11:20):
And so would they be sent to this industrial school? Well,
first of all, what did they do? Officers testified that
at one o'clock in the morning, the kids were found
sleeping together in a loft over a blacksmith shop, and
it was a shop that they'd broken into and stolen things.

Speaker 2 (11:36):
From previously or that night at night.

Speaker 3 (11:38):
Okay, and what things? One hundred guns?

Speaker 2 (11:42):
What they stole?

Speaker 3 (11:42):
On undred?

Speaker 2 (11:43):
Wait, they broke and stole a hundred guns and took asleep.
Then you're gonna need a wagon. Who's got a red wagon?
We had all these guns, one hundred guns.

Speaker 3 (11:54):
So all the parents showed up to court.

Speaker 2 (11:56):
They have parents that are actually the judge.

Speaker 3 (12:00):
The judge didn't think there was enough evidence against James Hopkins,
so he let him go into the custody of his parents.
Same with Mary Bowen, James McDonald's. So we're left with
John O'Keefe, Mary Sullivan, and Mary Avery. Yeah, little dick,
she was wild. So while the other kids are like
cowed by their experience in court, she thought the whole
thing was hilarious, laughing. Oh yeah, she's cutting up, giggling

(12:22):
through the whole thing. Where did she get this attitude?

Speaker 2 (12:25):
Right?

Speaker 3 (12:25):
Well, the San Francisco Examiner came through with some gross
journalism as was there. Oh yes, her mother, a corpulent
and careless looking woman, stood behind her and shook her
sides with laughter at her daughter's cuteness. The girl had
been a frequent visitor and was promptly committed, evidently to
her entire satisfaction. Yeah, so Mary, little dick Avery gets

(12:52):
sent off to the industrial school, and her mom's totally
cool with you.

Speaker 2 (12:55):
She's got three squares.

Speaker 3 (12:58):
More from the exam quote. The Sullivan girl was concerned
sometime since in the larceny of rings from a jewelry
store on Fourth Street. Missus Sullivan pleaded for her daughter,
but in vain. Her daughter had been in a similar
predicament once before and had promised to be good. She
was committed, and the vicious Little Mary Avery clapped her
hands and crowed with glee. When they were about to

(13:21):
be marched downstairs, she manifested some tenderness by bidding a
dude to her not deeply affected mother in a touching manner.

Speaker 2 (13:27):
This feels like the end of a law in order
to spu episode like crazy teen girls like waving goodbye
to her friends leaving her like bye.

Speaker 3 (13:36):
Well, yeah, so these are bad kids, right, yeah, And
that's March of eighteen seventy seven. Six months later, reference TV.

Speaker 2 (13:44):
Now that you've come clean, it's liberating.

Speaker 3 (13:47):
You have no idea instead of that what I don't know?
I don't anyway. Six months after this, Little Dick's back. Yeah,
I was hoping from the examiner.

Speaker 2 (13:58):
Down your hair gone.

Speaker 3 (14:00):
Here's their little blurb, Little Dick again is the headline. Yes,
Mary Avery, a juvenile thief only thirteen years of age
and known to the police as Little Dick, was yesterday
convicted in the police court a vagrancy. Some time ago,
she was arrested for having stolen one hundred revolvers from
a store on Market Street and was committed to the
Industrial School. She had been in the school but three

(14:21):
months when she was released by order of the school
committee of the board of supervisors. Okay, three months, three months,
and then she gets out.

Speaker 2 (14:28):
So it's basically juvie but with a job.

Speaker 3 (14:30):
Yeah, So then she's just a vagrant, right, So that
means that like she's not going home.

Speaker 2 (14:34):
She drunk in public, That's what I'm guessing. She's on
some Spanish wine in the afternoon.

Speaker 3 (14:40):
Probably two months after this. After that bust, she and
the gang are back in business, at least for a
little while. So there was this nice store called Feigenbaum
and Company on the corner of Sansomon Pine in San Francisco.
It's pretty much a department store.

Speaker 5 (14:53):
The name.

Speaker 3 (14:53):
November eighteenth, eighteen seventy seven, they're burgled. The crooks entered
the place around nine o'clock at night by the climbed
onto the roof of the bootblacks shop next door. They
entered the store through the second story window, and there's
like this elevator that goes up and down either way.
They get in there. They made off with fancy toys
and valuable music boxes.

Speaker 2 (15:13):
We're talking like a like a dumb waiter, like the
like for the restaurants and.

Speaker 3 (15:17):
South for the hotel, the goods from Florida. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (15:19):
So the kids are sitting in there at the square
boxes with kids. Kids are toys perfect.

Speaker 3 (15:26):
It's like Annie's orphanage.

Speaker 2 (15:28):
Can you imagine if you could like run a crew
of kids back then and like you were actually like
the Fagan character.

Speaker 3 (15:33):
But in San Francisco, this pops up, you'll see, Oh whoa.
So two days later, Allen and Company's gun store at
fifteen fifteen Market gets broken into.

Speaker 2 (15:42):
The gun store.

Speaker 3 (15:43):
Yeah, second gun store. Someone pride open the cellar door.
They took one hundred and twelve guns like gunpowder and ammo.

Speaker 2 (15:50):
How many kids they are? They army?

Speaker 3 (15:52):
No, no, so the cops. They went through the pawn shops,
the secondhand stores for days, came up empty. One day
they're walking through and the known as Tar Flat, and
it was an Irish neighborhood down by the water, but
like away from the Barbary Coast to South Market. It
was called Tar Flat because that's where the gas company
was distilling coal and they dumped the sledge by product

(16:13):
into the Bay. Yeah, and so the whole place stank.
It was terrible, and it was a super poor neighborhood.
And like the higher ups in San Francisco, they like
to blame a good portion of the problems in the
city on those who lived in top neighborhood and who
lives in that neighborhood little Dick and her minions. So
the cops they're walking through the neighborhood and they see

(16:35):
this kid just like bragging to some other kids about
a mounted pistol that he had with them pistol, and
so he's showing it off. The police swoop in. They
questioned him. I'm going to guess that it was not
a gentle chat and they didn't buy the story that
he gave about how he got it. So they take
him down to the jail and when he gets there,
he rats on his pals. So the cops they go

(16:55):
back to the neighborhood, round up the rest of the kids.
One of them, James Walsh, remember him. He had a
bunch of miniature toys and six pistols hidden in a
bag in his basement. So this is like, this is
the beginning of the montage in a movie where they
go from like criminal's house to criminal's house findings. So
then they go to James O'Keefe's house, which is right
next door. They go up to the roof they find

(17:17):
twenty five of the pistols. Next they go to Charles
Day's house in the attic. At his place, they find
a bag that has sixteen pistols in it, a music
box valued it two hundred dollars, which is like six
thousand dollars to Day.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
It's ridiculous.

Speaker 3 (17:31):
And then like miniature fire engines and toys.

Speaker 2 (17:34):
The mixture of the guns and toys is blowing my mind.
They're like, oh, they got a bag of Jack's and
then like, you know, a rifle exactly.

Speaker 3 (17:44):
So after that they go to James Lahy's house. That
kid like really saying right at this James's house they
recover a bunch of guns and even more toys. Then
they go to George Gasper's house. In this they go
down into the cellar and they see that the earth
is recently disturbed.

Speaker 2 (18:01):
He's got a collection of landlines.

Speaker 3 (18:02):
They start digging. They go down three feet and they
find eighteen pistols three feet, this big bunch of toys,
and then another two hundred dollars music box.

Speaker 2 (18:11):
What wow, Benjamin, I like, and he tried to hide them.
I got you did the best.

Speaker 3 (18:15):
Job trying to hide him. Benjamin Schmidt. He conveniently lived
right across the street from the jail. In his house
they found one of the stolen music boxes. More guns
then they then they go to Mary Avery's house.

Speaker 2 (18:27):
Oh lord, she's.

Speaker 3 (18:28):
Got ten pistols, toys, a lamp, and then ammunition. So
she's strapped up. All the kids are arrested. The police
they were able to recover like most of the stolen merchandise.

Speaker 2 (18:39):
I want to know if the kids were using guns
like people use loose diamonds. Now, it's just like something
is you.

Speaker 3 (18:44):
Can just or selling adults.

Speaker 2 (18:47):
Yeah, I figure that's exactly. Adults would buy it from
kids and no one expected, and they're gonna hold value.

Speaker 3 (18:51):
Well, and the thing of the u the kid down right.
Well yeah, the value of the property altogether was estimated
to be about thousand dollars. That's like almost thirty harand
today it's a good kids stole. Yeah. So December third,
eighteen seventy seven, the whole group is convicted sent off
to the industrial school. Mary Avery did some time there actually,
this time at the Magdalene assigned Yeah, and then she

(19:14):
got out the next year. She was exactly she was.

Speaker 2 (19:19):
Stop sitting next to.

Speaker 3 (19:20):
Her, She's like, hey, you want to go in on
a score. She was out for a month and then
gets arrested again, this time according to the La Evening
Express for quote leading an idle and dissolute life.

Speaker 2 (19:31):
I've done that. That's not so bad.

Speaker 3 (19:33):
I lost track of all of them after that, at
least in the paper, because you know, they got common
names and like the girls may marry, moved, and the
likelihoods they spent their lives in and out of jail,
and their names make it into the paper because the
novelty of them being young, it's not surprising. But whatever,
hundreds of guns and passed through their hands. Let's take
a break. When we come back. I got more bad kids.

Speaker 5 (19:56):
For you, Zaren Elizabeth, welcome back to my gold Rush

(20:20):
after school special.

Speaker 2 (20:20):
I want to buy a gun, yes, and this kid
gave it to me.

Speaker 3 (20:23):
How old was the kid?

Speaker 2 (20:25):
Six seven?

Speaker 3 (20:25):
I don't know, perfect that's what I want. So we
had little Dick and her crew running guns in eighteen
seventy seven, and I guess you know, like I said,
I think they're trying to sell them to my guests,
you know. Yeah, And the toys were just for them
to play with because the kid, kid.

Speaker 2 (20:40):
Children, how did they come And that's what they want.
If they had money, that's what they would buy. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (20:44):
Yeah, And this time pre nineteen oh six quake in
San Francisco is just so wild. Oh yes, Like it
wasn't just San Francisco though, Things were crazy across the
Bay too. Here's a quick piece from the San Francisco
Chronicle July sixteenth, nineteen oh five, headline made drunk by
their booty.

Speaker 6 (21:03):
I've been July fifteenth, Yes, you've been drunk on booty,
drinking freely of the whiskey which they had taken from
a home of Fred Wagner at Dwight Way and Spaulding Street.

Speaker 3 (21:15):
Was the undoing of a gang of small boys who
have been operating as burglars in the neighborhood and have
twice looted Wagner's place. Because the boys were so drunk
that they could not walk nor talk straight, it was
an easy matter for the local police to lay their
hands on the offenders, and they were captured and forced
to disclose the names of the rest of the members
of the juvenile gang. Those who were thus caught were

(21:38):
Willie Small, aged eight, w James Small, aged nine, Fred
McNamara aged ten, John McNamara aged eighteen, and Gustaf Palash
aged thirteen.

Speaker 2 (21:50):
Wow, so they got like brothers and one big brother
bro and they're passing around a flask and everyone's getting drunk.

Speaker 3 (21:56):
It's an eight year old, does you know? It's like
Drew Down would wrap about almost a century later. They
grew up hell early they did. It was always right.
So back to San Francisco. Any headline like this deserves attention. Sure,
tiny prisoners confess to police.

Speaker 2 (22:13):
These are all awesome headlines.

Speaker 3 (22:16):
Here's here's what happened in nineteen oh nine. A little
gang of boys broke into stores up and down Fillmore
Street over the course of a week or so. Okay,
all to drug store, Brownlee's hardware, l Harris Men's furnishings.

Speaker 2 (22:29):
Are these open? Are they coming in like masks on
or their cloth?

Speaker 3 (22:33):
Sneaky? Sneaky. So they stole all sorts of stuff, But
the big ticket items were a bunch of cameras. So
these are like early cats.

Speaker 2 (22:40):
Totally brownings and stuff like, yeah, brown leather type and.

Speaker 3 (22:43):
It's not like Da garrettype mathews.

Speaker 2 (22:45):
And they're not on the sticks the tritt.

Speaker 3 (22:48):
So yeah, we're getting into like the earlier.

Speaker 2 (22:50):
You actually like in a box in your hand.

Speaker 3 (22:52):
Yes, exactly. So here's the gang. William Havely twelve years old,
his alias Red hen't He's got with him Willie Hall,
who's ten, and then Leo Lyons who's tent.

Speaker 2 (23:06):
His name is Lyon Lions, Leo Lions Spanish is Leo.

Speaker 3 (23:12):
All over the place, and this is my pal Red.
Red confessed, he tells everything, but he didn't confess to
the cops. He told his mom in this totally nonchalant
and like unbothered manner, that he'd rob some stores. His mother,
would you do in school today? I didn't go to school,
but I want to buy a camera. So the cops,
they hadn't really figured it all out yet, but they

(23:34):
picked up Leo and Willie Hull because it's like, you
guys are ten year olds who were very suspicious and
Red he doesn't think anything of his escapades, as the
San Francisco Examiner puts it at the time, So his
mom drags him down to the police station hands him over.
Oh like, and surely he'll clam up when the cops
are all right there, Like he's just speaking freely at

(23:54):
the breakfast table. No. No, he repeated his confession just
as breezy as before. He admits to the burglaries. He
admits to being the ringleader of the gang. There was
one burglary that hadn't been solved or connected to the crew.
Someone stole five thousand dollars worth of furs from ee
Wally store on Fillmore. That's one hundred and seventy two

(24:18):
thousand dollars today. Read Red Wooden cop to that one.
I think that's the only one where the goods hadn't
been recovered. And so Lions and Hall they get arrested.
They insist that they're not guilty for any of the burglaries.
They just happened to be where the stolen goods were kidden.
That's weird. Pure happens to I take walks. Yeah, So

(24:38):
Hall gets shipped off to Juvie. Lion Lion he gets
released on bail. Before they went though, they both said
that the actual burglaries were committed by a boy called
Red and so at this point, this is pre confession.
They're at a loss and they're like, who's Red. He hadn't
made a name for himself yet. But then all of
a sudden, this lady, his mom like, my kid himself, Red,

(25:00):
he's terrible, do something about it. So Red. They let
Red go back home with his mom, and I'm guessing,
like you know, she promised, I'm going to bring him
back to court when it goes on the docket, and
like you know, they're thinking she did her she's trying
her best, and she's not from tar Flats. We'll cut

(25:20):
her some slack, Yeah, exactly. So Red he didn't show
up in the papers after that, So I'm going to
hope that his mom got some sense into him one
way or another, hopefully. Leo Lyon, on the other hand,
he made one more newspaper appearance. Please be good date Lion,
September sixth, nineteen seventeen. San Francisco Examiner, headline, beer bottle
halts brother's menaces No. Leo Lyon's a clerk seventeen years

(25:46):
of age, living at fifteen fifty three Fulton Street, had
a fight with his brother in law, Charles Cleaver of
the same address at three o'clock this morning, Charlie Cleaver
Charlie Cleaver over two rings that both claimed Lions claimed
that Cleaver started towards him threateningly and he struck him
over the head with a beer bottle. Cleaver was taken
to the Park Hospital, where he was treated for a
severe laceration of the scalp. Lyons was arrested by Policeman H. H.

(26:10):
Lindoff and turned over to the juvenile authorities. WHOA, that's
messy and I love it. Three am brawl. Let me
give you another boy gang and I don't want to
tell you about this though. I want to show you.
I want you to use the power of imagination to
picture it. Oh Zarah closure as I'm right there with you,

(26:32):
I want you to picture it. It's Sinco de Mayo
nineteen oh four. People don't celebrate the Mexican victory over
the French at the Bottle of Puebla forty two years earlier, then,
at least I don't think so. Whatever you are, Special
Policeman Richard Harvey, SFPD, you're walking your beat in the
city's Fillmore district, right by Jefferson Square Park. It's eleven

(26:54):
o'clock at night and all is quiet. A dog barks
in the distance. A horse and buggy pass driver tip
in his cap to you as he slowly makes his
way up Buchanan Street. You reach thirteen oh three Buchanan
Jefferson Square Market, a butcher shop owned by Frederick Held.
Nice guy. Everyone in the neighborhood loves him. As you
pass the front door of the shop, you stop in

(27:15):
your tracks. The front door is ajar. No, it's a door. No,
it's a jar. This is highly unusual. You put your
shoulder against it and it yields. It swings back on
its hinges with a mighty creak, and you step just
inside the store, stopping at the threshold. A gas jet
is lit. Mister Held leaves this on every night. You

(27:35):
can see the faint flicker through the glass each night.
As you walk by in this dim light, you see
that the drawer of the cash register is open. You
step into the dark shop. As you pass the register,
you see the drawers empty. But you can't imagine mister
Held left anything in it when he closed up the
shop that evening. A safe. He probably has a safe.
You peer over and notice a small recess at the

(27:57):
rear of the store. In it. You can just take
out the shape of a safe in the inky darkness.
You rub your eyes, willing them to adjust to the
lack of light. You pull your revolver from the whole
stra at your hip and use your other hand to
grope your way along the counter toward the safe. You
call out, hello, mister held, are you here? No response.

(28:18):
You get to the safe and run your hand down
the scene where the door sets into the body of
the safe. You feel deep gouge marks near the dial,
but the safe remains sealed. You stand still and you
can only hear the tick of the clock on the wall.
Then you hear the gentle creak of a small hinge.
Your heart is beating fast, but you keep calm. In
the shadows, you see movement from next to the safe.

(28:40):
It's the ice box. The cover is lifting. You gulp
and tighten your grip on the handle of your revolver.
A small shaft of light from the gas flame shines
on the lid, flickering some manner of clarity. From the icebox,
something takes shape. You see it is the face of
a very scared little boy. You startle ah and you
tell the boy come out of there. You lift him

(29:02):
by the collar and march him out onto the sidewalk,
wedging the front door of the shop closed behind you.
What's your name, you asked the boy, Paul Dorney, He
tells you. How old are you? You ask eleven? You
take a deep breath and stare up at the foggy
blanket above you. What is happening with this world? You
wonder to yourself. Kids, these days are out of control.

(29:23):
I'm telling you so, Special Detective Harvey, this is.

Speaker 2 (29:27):
The TikTok, Elizabeth, totally.

Speaker 3 (29:28):
The TikTok that does these things to the ki.

Speaker 2 (29:31):
The used to say, you'd see in the articles like
right before the earthquake, TikTok and violent.

Speaker 3 (29:37):
Yeah, the violent video games of eighteen seventy eight.

Speaker 2 (29:40):
The worst, so you would, but they were the worst.

Speaker 3 (29:45):
You briefly inhabited the body of Special Detective Harvey. He
took Paul Dorney down to the station for questioning, and
Paul said, the guy, a guy told him to come
with him to the butcher shop, Like who yeah, he's
going to cut him in on the take. Well, who
is this guy? His name's Happy Hooligans. Happy, there's this

(30:09):
Happy hooligan. Everybody in the neighbor knows him well, Happy
Hooligan when he's at home. Dennis Gallagher years old. So
the police they go pick up Happy Hooligan Happy and
they question him. He says he doesn't know anything about
the burglary. He wasn't there last night. Dennis the Happy
Hooligan eventually had his charges waived when he said he'd

(30:31):
join the navy. Yeah, yeah, they're just so. Then a
few months later he deserts his spot on the Pensacola
and he's arrested again. Yeah, but then while he's a wall,
he's arrested again for stealing a basket. I don't know anyway,
Like that's it, pal, wrap it up, Okay, but let's

(30:52):
focus back on young. So his case was sent to
juvenile court, and I can only assume he was sent
to juvenile hall to cool out for a little bit.
But let's jump forward two years March of nineteen oh six.
This is one month, almost exactly one month before the
earth split and the city caught fire and everything changed,
and yet nothing really changed. So after the quake, you know,

(31:14):
that kind of random destruction became a possibility for people,
a likelihood. But I always feel like there's an innocence
before that they don't know how horrible things can be.

Speaker 2 (31:24):
Okay, do you think that the europe stood to California.
Did the eighteen twenty earthquake in California stay as something
that people remembered, like all this place shakes?

Speaker 3 (31:32):
Well, I think there's just a number of people that
were there in eighteen.

Speaker 2 (31:35):
Twenty, not many at all. Is it part of like,
you know, do people even know that earthquakes are a risk?

Speaker 3 (31:40):
I think that the majority do not. I think they
have small quakes, but they don't know they've never experienced
that pardon that pun. Yeah, And so here we're in
this time right before. It's sort of like when you
and I talk a lot about the time between World
War I and World War two, particularly in Europe and
in England, that you know, you don't know what's just

(32:00):
around the corner. You have this sense. And so that's
how I feel like this point is. And that's where
we find little Paul Dorney. He has graduated from supposed
dupe of happy hooligan to full on child faganesque gang leader.
Oh he becomes the Fagan.

Speaker 2 (32:16):
He's like, I got this.

Speaker 3 (32:17):
Yeah, so a.

Speaker 2 (32:18):
Few months prior I don't need happy.

Speaker 3 (32:19):
He held up a boy and took fifty cents from him.
He broke into a candy store on Hayte Street with
a fourteen year old named Edward Abrams, who was in
a Jewish orphan asylum. So he like befriends this little orphan,
is like, let's go rob a candy store, and the
two of them get together and run away. They made
their way south to Santa Is, where they were arrested.

(32:40):
Paul did six months with the Boys and Girls Aid Society,
and he'd been to the detention home four times at
this point, arrested several several times. So who's in his gang?
He's got Jack Durham twelve years old, Leslie Herbert sixteen,
George Peterson fourteen, George Fowler fourteen, and George had only

(33:02):
recently joined the gang after Paul convinced him to run
away from home. I joined my gang.

Speaker 2 (33:06):
Oh, I got a gag. You love it. We don't
have bedtimes.

Speaker 3 (33:09):
We have a boy known only as Mike Mike no
last name, fourteen years old, and then another boy known
only as Pete the Butcher's Kid.

Speaker 2 (33:19):
Pete the Butcher's fifteen.

Speaker 3 (33:20):
I hope he's not mister Helld's kid. Oh my god,
you know this is Pete, Pete the butcher.

Speaker 2 (33:25):
Get your heart out, guy, Ritchie. Oh my god.

Speaker 3 (33:27):
Seriously. So that mid March nineteen oh six, their crime
spree comes to a close. They've been pulling all sorts
of burglaries, robbery scams, and the police got a tip
that they had a den, a hideout, and there's this
vacant house on the corner of Page and Clayton, and
in the basement that was their headquarters. So here's what

(33:49):
the cops found when they raided the head Yeah, a mattress,
a hammer, a cobbler's nice.

Speaker 2 (33:56):
That sounds like place go on.

Speaker 3 (33:57):
I'm basically a hatchet, a bunch of keys, a bunch
of candles and some Then they had like all these
other tools like these kind of like you know, maybe
a thermal lamp. They wanted to be able to remove
lead pipe and like gas fixtures and like other articles
of value from homes. So they were breaking in. They

(34:18):
were the copper piping thebs of their days, the non
methamphetamine copper thieves. They're breaking into houses and taking gas
fixtures like lamps from the and they had all the
tools for the job likes, so Paul and the rest
of the boys they get arrested, George tells them everything.

Speaker 2 (34:41):
George's it's just one one of the Georgie.

Speaker 3 (34:43):
And the George's. He said that the basement was their
rendezvous point for many, many months. Oh, it's George, the
one who ran away from home.

Speaker 2 (34:51):
George j George, George George.

Speaker 3 (34:54):
So he's like, we've been living in this place for months.
It's fantastic. They sleep all the day long and then
they go out looting at night. They're amazing.

Speaker 2 (35:03):
He's like the cruise director taking him around. And then
sometimes when we have time, we just throw darts at
the wall.

Speaker 3 (35:09):
So they have this, like you said, never never land
like this, like boy's escape to do bad things. Let's
take a break. When we come back, I'm going to
give you a first hand account of this gang from
the leader himself.

Speaker 7 (35:21):
Yes, hello, Elizabeth, kid gangs and old San Francisco.

Speaker 3 (35:46):
Oh man, so you thought you were a rascally kid.

Speaker 2 (35:50):
I have been put squarely in my place.

Speaker 3 (35:53):
Yeah, so before we stepped aside for those fantastic ads.
By the way, they may annoy, but that's what keeps
this show free and it keeps iHeart from shutting us down.
You can no, don't do.

Speaker 2 (36:05):
I didn't say that. Who said that?

Speaker 3 (36:06):
That day before all that happens. I was telling you
about Paul Dorny. Can I also just mention we don't
know what adds play or for how long?

Speaker 2 (36:17):
Yeah, just understand that disconnected.

Speaker 3 (36:19):
No control connection. So just that said, they.

Speaker 2 (36:23):
Don't tell us. I know, yes, we record some You're like,
wait a minute, that was your voice. How do you
know what's going on? A lot of things we do.
We don't know what's going on exactly.

Speaker 3 (36:31):
This is the story of my life. So I was
telling you about Paul Dorney. He got busted at that
butcher shop. Then a couple of years later he's running
a burglary ring.

Speaker 2 (36:39):
What happened happened?

Speaker 3 (36:42):
The San Francisco Examiner covered the bust itself and had
this observation quote. He talks in the language of convicts
and tramps and refers to his crimes with the nonchalance
of a hardened criminal. He's traveled all over California on
break beams and refers fluently of being jugged in Reno
into the tanks at Sanase.

Speaker 2 (37:04):
This little kid, i'n't juno.

Speaker 3 (37:07):
I'm gonna guess that means arrested.

Speaker 2 (37:09):
Yeah, yeah, like thrown the drunk.

Speaker 3 (37:12):
The drunk take in Rena, Oh boy Reno.

Speaker 2 (37:17):
With a bunch of other people who are also fitting
to be in that same place.

Speaker 3 (37:21):
With you do the math?

Speaker 2 (37:22):
Yeah, so who wants to do a sing along?

Speaker 3 (37:25):
Guys, there's more? The examiner has more. They interviewed the
boy himself.

Speaker 2 (37:30):
You please. I love that.

Speaker 3 (37:31):
It's like there's no parents stepping in, and the cops
aren't like, you don't get to talk to this boy.

Speaker 2 (37:37):
Everyone wants everyone. Yeah, you gotta tell papers call to
the boy.

Speaker 3 (37:41):
I ran away from home a week ago, said Dorny.
I worked for a while as a messenger for the
Western Union, and I had to deliver two dollars and
ten cents. I lost the money. My father does not
want me at home, so I decided to go to
Watsonville with Fowler and get some work. I live at
one oh one Falcon Avenue and Fowler lives at one
o three on the same street. Since we left home,
we've slept in the cellar adjoining my house. I stole

(38:04):
food from my own house. I never went to the
place on Page Street until about five o'clock in the
morning yesterday. The gang has been there for about four months,
and Duram took me around there. I want Judge Moraski
to send me to Watsonville or give me a place
in a private family where I can work. I've made
a lot of promises to be good, and if I
had a chance, I would try. But now that the

(38:25):
police know me, I can't get anything to do. If
they send me to the Ione or Wittier reform schools,
it'll make a crook of me. I know lots of
boys who've been to those places, and they tell me
about them.

Speaker 2 (38:36):
I like how this kid is basically somebody who would
later be like a middle aged man and a Steinbeck story.

Speaker 3 (38:41):
Yes, you know, he just wants work.

Speaker 2 (38:42):
Yeah, I just want to get back to Watsonville. I'm
just unwoilling to work a straight day for a good pain.

Speaker 3 (38:47):
He's so hard boiled and so full of it.

Speaker 2 (38:50):
Yeah, I'm not.

Speaker 3 (38:51):
A crook, even though I've been arrested so many times
that I've been in and out of juvie.

Speaker 2 (38:55):
Like want to get down there.

Speaker 3 (38:58):
It's all fowler. Fowlers always drewel out of the corner.
This kid has done so much more than the cops
even know about.

Speaker 2 (39:04):
Okay, you know how like people who like kids in
the eighties were like like the flex on, like our parents.
They had to be reminded by the news to look
for us, Like it's ten o'clock, do you know where
your kids are? We ain't got nothing on these kids.
It's like these kids have been burned down. The news
stop bothering on parents.

Speaker 3 (39:21):
Totally, totally. So then that the article continues, quote Fowler
has never been arrested before. He has never been able
to hold a job on account of his practical jokes.
He worked two days in a candy store and was
dismissed because he put vinegar in the ice cream. He
will probably be released on probation. Dorney will go to
Whittier as Judge Moraski agreed to release him two months

(39:43):
ago on a promise to reform, with the understanding that
the next time he was arrested he would go to
the reform school. Of course, I've never done anything, but
I know the Judge Moraski like, I know this here close.

Speaker 2 (39:55):
He sent me to wait.

Speaker 3 (39:56):
Yeah, and poor Fowler like, anyway.

Speaker 2 (39:59):
Dude, people eating the vinegar ice cream The first lick
at that and you just want to cry. You've been
so excited about ice cream. You never get an ice
cream band like this is not only you can just
go down to the store and get this is a
major trade. You get the major trade. You're like, oh, cab,
maybe this is the first time you've ever tried ice cream.

Speaker 3 (40:15):
They're not going to refund.

Speaker 2 (40:16):
You totally enjoy that. Vandar kid. Maybe I hope you
got a sling. You can get it to them.

Speaker 3 (40:21):
You're in buy in the counter. So I was unable
to trace Paul Dorny after this. Let's just let's say
he got a chance to go live with a family
and rite the ship.

Speaker 2 (40:30):
I think he went down to Old Mexico.

Speaker 3 (40:32):
I think he probably did ye Fisherman back when it
was the Sea of Corte.

Speaker 2 (40:36):
He was down there.

Speaker 3 (40:38):
So the only other kid that could track was Leslie Herbert.
And that was a story from two years prior, back
when Paul was trying to rob the butcher shop. So
this is from uh, this is from the June ninth,
nineteen oh four edition of the San Francisco Collin Post.

Speaker 2 (40:54):
I don't know the call.

Speaker 3 (40:55):
Headlined boy says cook kicked him.

Speaker 2 (40:58):
That's the headline headline, so like man bites dog, boy
says yeah, Cook kicked him.

Speaker 3 (41:03):
Morton L. Cook, printer and advertising man, was arrested yesterday
afternoon on a warrant issued by Police Judge Morgan, charging
him with battery. He was released on bail. The complaining
witnessed against him is Leslie Herbert fourteen seventy three Oak Street,
whose father is chief steward on the Transport. Thomas. The
Boy said that he and Cook's son had a fight

(41:24):
at Page Street and Central Avenue on Tuesday afternoon when
Cook ran up to him and kicked him in the groin. Ooh,
so he's fighting this kid and the kid's.

Speaker 2 (41:33):
Dad's get boy, and you're like nuts them.

Speaker 3 (41:36):
So the very best part of this isn't the poetic
placement of the groin punchline and the copy. In old papers,
they would fill empty column inches with like small items
or announcements or fun facts. In one of the other
articles I was reading for this, there was a note
underneath it that the wildflowers were in bloom and Santa
Clara County, and caravans with buggies would be leaving on

(41:58):
a certain day from like a certain place to go
look at them cute little things like that wild tour. Yeah.
So a lot of time there's not a very clear
delineation that the main article is over and the new item.

Speaker 2 (42:09):
That is weird. I know exactly what you mean.

Speaker 3 (42:11):
And that's sort of the case here. So at the
end of the article about Leslie and the kick and
the groin, there's like a little design flourish line and
then it says this, a woman five feet two inches
high should weigh one hundred and twenty pounds.

Speaker 2 (42:23):
That's it.

Speaker 3 (42:23):
That's it.

Speaker 2 (42:23):
In moving the bottom of.

Speaker 3 (42:24):
The paper, that's it. Just to quick enough. Fun fact,
duly noticed.

Speaker 2 (42:29):
Stir this in your morning coffee.

Speaker 3 (42:30):
Old papers are so weird or wonderful.

Speaker 2 (42:32):
Oh my god. Yes you also all the updates like
this not society pages, but they'll just have to sprinkled
in there for this type of stuff. Like some and
so just got back from Canada. They're gonna have a
photo display.

Speaker 7 (42:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (42:42):
Oh, or even even like more close to home, so
they're like, you know, someone's overturned from Sacramento the train.

Speaker 2 (42:48):
You're okay, the actual announcement of like someone goes back,
mister Irving's back in town.

Speaker 3 (42:54):
It's incredible.

Speaker 2 (42:55):
You was your money.

Speaker 3 (42:55):
You know, look, oh what a time. One of the
things that I find frustrating about the paper is that
they kind of all these old papers. They always assume
that you've been reading the paper in full every single day. Yes,
so they just sort of continue stories and don't ever
give background, and like, it's not helpful in my research journey.
A lot of times, I got I got one more

(43:18):
for you before we go. It's a lone wolf, not
a gang. Oh but it's a good one.

Speaker 2 (43:23):
I like it.

Speaker 3 (43:24):
August of nineteen ten, little Ruth Schroeder got arrested. She's twelve. Yes,
she's caught pickpocketing a lady in a market.

Speaker 2 (43:33):
Love it.

Speaker 3 (43:33):
And they sent her to the detention home and she escaped.
She climbed over a sixteen foot fence. I knew I
liked her, and like, luckily there was a pile of
sand on the other side of the fence that she
was in. There hurt her legs, but yeah, but she
was fine, and she's just like out. Yeah. So first
she runs into a saloon to hide, and they kicked
her out, and she's like one hundred percent dress like

(43:56):
Anne of Green Gables. She like a little straw hat
on and a little sweater. The whole get up.

Speaker 2 (44:02):
So she's not like this tight one of those curved
staff are like guiding sheep around.

Speaker 3 (44:07):
She's not like this wizen little thing like you could
blend in at a saloon.

Speaker 6 (44:11):
So they're like, get out of her kids. So she
runs off, so she could.

Speaker 3 (44:18):
She goes into a church and she hides in a confessional. Yeah,
and so they of course found her, and she's dragon.
She tries to explain this like months long pickpocketing crime,
and this is she said that a man hypnotized her
and convinced her to steal. Brilliant the San Francisco Examine quote.

(44:43):
The man that made me steal never gave me anything.
He made me help him. Every time I saw him,
he would go to where there was lots of ladies
in the elevators. He'd always stand in the back at
the emporium at Hales and at the Lincoln Market. That's
where he would go with me. I don't know how
many persons I took for him, but every time I
took one, he go away quickly. He said, no one
would ever think I'd done it because I was so little.

(45:04):
It was easy the way he showed me like this
and with a quick adroit movement, the little slender hands
grasps the purse of the examiner representative and illustrated the
method of picking a pocket.

Speaker 2 (45:14):
Hmm.

Speaker 3 (45:15):
So she's like every time I do it, I'm in
a crowded store and there's a man that no one
else can see.

Speaker 2 (45:20):
Huh. And you believe her?

Speaker 3 (45:22):
No?

Speaker 2 (45:22):
I do?

Speaker 3 (45:23):
I believed her.

Speaker 2 (45:24):
I believe it. I think that there was a man.
But I think that she's also pinning a lot of
her crimes on this person. So I think it's both.

Speaker 3 (45:30):
So there's all this debate. There's this debate is she
telling the truth. The consensus seem to be that she's
making up this Fagan character, okay, and that she was
in this by and for herself.

Speaker 2 (45:41):
I think she definitely was when she got caught.

Speaker 3 (45:43):
Here's what the examiner said again quote. The Schroder house,
which stands on a sixty foot lot which the grandmother owns,
was in the pink of neatness. The veranda was screened
in with a hedge of blossoming vines, and the garden
looked as if much care had been lavished on it.
The interior of the modest home was equally trim and
spotlessly clean. The family of missus Martin had resided there

(46:06):
since eighteen fifty, coming here from England, her father Jonathan Peel,
according to the grandmother, being first captain to Sir Robert Peel,
the great English lawmaker. I've got a little income, she said,
we're not hard up. Ruth had all she wanted. I
don't know how this happened, but this just broke me up.
When my other children hear of this, they'll all want
to go away from San Francisco for shame, sobbed the

(46:27):
old grandmother. So she comes from this nice family, Okay,
but there's more please. So they they call her mom
down to the station and she arrives in this like
velvet opera cloak, and she's just dripping in diamonds. She's
got all these rings this for her and she's drunk
as a skun.

Speaker 2 (46:46):
I love this her pickled yes.

Speaker 3 (46:48):
So they tell her gesticulations. They tell her, your daughter's
been arrested and then she tried to run away and
we found her and she was arrested for pick pock market.
And the mom hears this, flips out and tries to
strangle herself right there in the station. What with her
like cloak.

Speaker 2 (47:07):
With her like opera gloves.

Speaker 3 (47:08):
Yeah, like the cloak she wraps And at first she
says she's going to strangle her daughter. Then she says,
I'm going to strangle myself.

Speaker 2 (47:15):
One hand for each of us.

Speaker 3 (47:16):
So they put her in a street jacket old school style. Yeah,
and like tell her like all right, cool out, like
I said. The cops dismissed the story about the man
who hypnotized her.

Speaker 2 (47:27):
Here's the report she learned her deft hand mode.

Speaker 3 (47:29):
Well, here's the report in the Colin Post. Quote. The
child was subjected to a rigid cross examination, but this
only served to display a remarkable power of dissimulation and
of clever acting. Ruth admitted that she practiced stealing from
purses regularly every Saturday, but would not implicate her mother,
and naively said that she stole by toys and threw

(47:50):
the surplus money away quote so mama would not know.
When she was searched, twenty one dollars was found carefully
tucked away about her person, in her shoes and in
her waist. She admitted getting as much as one hundred
and fifty dollars on a Saturday from patrons of crowded
department stores and markets. Her attire was neat, and her
brown hair and candid, childish eyes would never have been

(48:12):
suspected of her rogue's cunning.

Speaker 2 (48:14):
So okay, the guy who trained her was her mom.

Speaker 3 (48:17):
That's kind of what the papers keep hinting at.

Speaker 2 (48:19):
I mean, I mean some some adult no child comes
up with, like you don want me to get real
good at not Jack's, I'm gonna get go to picking pockets.
I'm just gonna mind.

Speaker 3 (48:27):
She's obviously not turning the loot over to someone else,
and I love when she's like, I spent it and
I threw the rest away.

Speaker 2 (48:32):
I turned it out to her mom to more diamonds.

Speaker 3 (48:34):
So like she said that she saturdays one hundred and fifties,
that's nearly five grands.

Speaker 2 (48:40):
Got to get you some diamonds.

Speaker 3 (48:41):
So it turns out that detectives they knew there wasn't
a guy because they've been trailing her for two months.
So they got tons of reports of this girl matching.

Speaker 2 (48:51):
Her description her for two months.

Speaker 3 (48:53):
Accused of purse matching. So a detective sees her in
the store and goes to grab her arm and she
runs and then he catches up with her and she
falls to the ground. And in the paper they said
she quote feigned hysteria. So the crowd in the store,
they get it around. Yeah, well they tell the guy,
but they tell they get back up, back up, leave
her alone. He has to flash his badge and he's like,

(49:15):
this girl is shop lit. You know, she's pickpocketing people.
People still defend her in the store. Of course she's back.

Speaker 2 (49:22):
Away, Yeah, doll baby.

Speaker 3 (49:24):
So they get her to the station.

Speaker 2 (49:25):
You leave that magic angel baby alone.

Speaker 3 (49:27):
All the evidence is laid in front of her, like
we have this this, and then she first that's when
she tries the story about the guy, you know, making
her steel, that he hypnotized me before her mother comes in. Yeah,
and then she and she ups it. He didn't just
hypnotize me, he had a gun, and like, none of
it starts to make sense. Finally she confesses to everything,
so her mom gets there. They finally calm her down.

Speaker 2 (49:50):
They let her go out of the street jacket.

Speaker 3 (49:52):
Out of the street jacket. Ruth gets sent to the
detention home. She was there for less than a week
because they drop the charges, just let her walk why
they could get any witnesses against her, and she'd muddied
her confession so much with the hypnotist story first. But
a year later, Ruth's mom was in the papers again.
I'm telling you San Francisco Examiner quote missus Lillian Schroeder,

(50:15):
mother of Ruth Schroeder, a child criminal. A child criminal
whose career attracted the attention of many sociologists last August,
burst into the limelight again last night when she caused
the arrest of William Riardon on a charge of robbery.
Huh so, Lillian. She told the cops that she'd spent
the day hanging out with this.

Speaker 2 (50:36):
Guy, reared Billy.

Speaker 3 (50:38):
He gave her booze. They're having a good old time.

Speaker 2 (50:40):
Together playing card games.

Speaker 3 (50:42):
Yeah, but then he slipped her a mickey and then
took two diamond rings of hers worth one hundred and
seventy bucks. Cops, they're familiar with this dude, so they
arrest him. They find one of the rings on him, messy,
just the way we love it. And then that was
that is that for that story?

Speaker 2 (51:00):
Was he awake when they found him?

Speaker 3 (51:02):
Who knows?

Speaker 2 (51:03):
I'm wondering if she, like, you know, you go.

Speaker 3 (51:06):
Off into the midst of time that happened. That's all
we have, so we're left hanging on that.

Speaker 2 (51:12):
I do like that.

Speaker 3 (51:13):
I mean, is this is this your ridiculous takeaway? It
could be Okay, let's have it.

Speaker 2 (51:17):
Okay, here you go, my ridiculous take away, Elizabeth, thank
you for asking for yes once ever, Dave Sweel, make
a note of this. Okay, to have your child be
a child criminal and then to be known as the
mother of that is doubly bad for I imagine a parent,
because one is like, oh, you failed, But then two,
let's say you were trying to raise that child to

(51:39):
be a criminal. They've already outshined you at like eleven
So either way, either way you want to look at it.

Speaker 3 (51:45):
And they drop the charges. But then a year later
she's known as a child criminal in the papers.

Speaker 2 (51:50):
Yeah, you know, I've known worse since Elizabeth. What's your
ridiculous takeaway?

Speaker 3 (51:55):
Kids are wild these every day? No, but I mean seriously,
like you think about like they were running wild, they
were totally.

Speaker 2 (52:06):
This is why people like say things about However, whenever
anyone says about any group about how now is the
worst thing or it's so whatever they say, I do
not listen to them, because we have the benefit of
history to remind us. You just don't know well, and
you have a very limited perspective you're using to say,
this is whatever these TikTok kids are doing, old people
having sex in the retirement homes to giving each other

(52:28):
as TV. It's whatever you're saying is wild. It's ain't new.

Speaker 3 (52:31):
The kids were shouldering a lot of responsibility too.

Speaker 2 (52:34):
They were little people.

Speaker 3 (52:35):
They had just a lot of adults just.

Speaker 2 (52:37):
Couldn't vote, they didn't have legal rights.

Speaker 3 (52:39):
Yeah, in that regard, well, you know, it's like but
there it was not.

Speaker 2 (52:44):
They had been smoking for eight years by the time
they're ten.

Speaker 3 (52:46):
Drunk they got cirrhosis. No, but it was really common
for people to you know, the kids, they didn't go
to You had to be wealthy to go to school. Yes,
everyone else you're working, you know, like I had relatives
in that time.

Speaker 2 (52:58):
I you know, if you made a past eighth grade
and that.

Speaker 3 (53:01):
Time where like paper boys are running messages delivery people. Yeah, exactly, and.

Speaker 2 (53:06):
So that's if you're not working in the factory or
the fields.

Speaker 3 (53:09):
Most of them didn't get past like sixth grade at
that point. And so they're also shouldering the burden of
like parents who are really struggling and.

Speaker 2 (53:18):
Lots of financial ups and down time get to take
care of other kids.

Speaker 3 (53:21):
Single single parents are one does at that point from
some weird like their doctor didn't use the right medicine,
or just if you know, if if if you got
a single mom, like she's ostracized instant, so you carry
the burden of that and you're living in this poor
neighborhood and everyone.

Speaker 2 (53:35):
So anyway, Interestingly, some people want to go back to this.
How do we get rid of the regulations we've created,
just stop from this happening? How do we get back
to like little hands get in the machine?

Speaker 3 (53:45):
Flavor issues is so insane?

Speaker 2 (53:48):
But whatever, that's I'm not.

Speaker 3 (53:51):
You know what, you know it will help? What else
talk about? Oh yeah that will help?

Speaker 2 (53:58):
Oh my god.

Speaker 3 (54:05):
I love you.

Speaker 2 (54:11):
I think we need an episode devoted purely to Zarin's
uh theories on mehmet this second go yes, you know
how b oh man, Elizabeth, you are in for it now.
I was just watching that this weekend. I was just
checking back am a Man memed the second and the

(54:32):
memoed versus Vlad, which I've recommended before I just I mean,
the whole thing is amazing, right, like the story, but
you can't find a lot of in like a good
documentaries on MEMED. So I have to go back to
the Memod versus Constantinople, Memod versus Blad just to hear
those historians talk about it.

Speaker 3 (54:48):
I think you need to do a podcast memod.

Speaker 2 (54:50):
I could figure it fourteen fifty three for y'all.

Speaker 3 (54:54):
Okay, yes, let's make it happen.

Speaker 2 (54:56):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (54:57):
Letter writing campaign. So for today, you can find us
online at ridiculous Crime dot com. Great website Class Act.

Speaker 2 (55:06):
Thirteen time James Beard Award.

Speaker 3 (55:08):
Winner, Car and Drivers Top website over Yeah, We're at
Ridiculous Crime. On Twitter and Instagram. You can email Ridiculous
Crime at jamail dot com. Leave us a talkback on
the iHeart app. Please reach out. Ridiculous Crime is hosted

(55:30):
by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by
Big Richard Dave Cousten, age ten, starring Annalise Rutger as Judith.
Research is by Leader of the West Side Toy Bandits
mrsa Brown, age nine, and pint Size counterfeiter Andrea song Sharpenteer,
age six, The theme song is by tween Gun runners
Thomas Lee and Travis Dutton. Host wardrobe is provided by

(55:52):
Botany five hundred. Guest hair and makeup by Sparkleshot and
mister Andre. Executive producers are three year old Pickpocket Ben
Bowen and Toddler Safecracker Noel Brown.

Speaker 5 (56:08):
Ridicous Crime, Say It One More Time Requious Crime.

Speaker 1 (56:15):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts
from my heart Radio visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.