Professional Criminals of America

From Gilded Age New York

Thomas Byrnes - Foreword by R. Scott Decker

A late-nineteenth century rogues gallery of America's foremost murderers, bank robbers, con men, forgers, embezzlers, and pickpockets.Written in 1886, Professional Criminals of America contains biographical sketches, including photographs, of some four hundred of the nation's leading criminals. Each profile details the crimes committed and the circumstances leading up to arrest and conviction. Also included are short, informative chapters on criminal methods, executions, opium addiction, fugitives from justice, and prison commutation laws, along with intriguing chapters on mysterious unsolved murders, adventurers and adventuresses, and a list of every prison and state penitentiary in America at the time of publication.

Globe Pequot / Lyons Press

Pages: 520 • Trim: 9 x 11⅜

978-1-4930-4196-1 • Hardback • August 2019 • $27.95 • (£19.99)

978-1-4930-4188-6 • eBook • August 2019 • $25.50 • (£19.99)

Subjects: True Crime / General, History / United States / 19th Century, True Crime / Con Artists, Hoaxes & Deceptions

Professional Criminals of America

From Gilded Age New York

Hardback

eBook

Summary

A late-nineteenth century rogues gallery of America's foremost murderers, bank robbers, con men, forgers, embezzlers, and pickpockets.Written in 1886, Professional Criminals of America contains biographical sketches, including photographs, of some four hundred of the nation's leading criminals. Each profile details the crimes committed and the circumstances leading up to arrest and conviction. Also included are short, informative chapters on criminal methods, executions, opium addiction, fugitives from justice, and prison commutation laws, along with intriguing chapters on mysterious unsolved murders, adventurers and adventuresses, and a list of every prison and state penitentiary in America at the time of publication.

Details

Globe Pequot / Lyons Press

Pages: 520 • Trim: 9 x 11⅜

978-1-4930-4196-1 • Hardback • August 2019 • $27.95 • (£19.99)

978-1-4930-4188-6 • eBook • August 2019 • $25.50 • (£19.99)

Subjects: True Crime / General, History / United States / 19th Century, True Crime / Con Artists, Hoaxes & Deceptions

Author

Inspector Thomas Byrnes (June 15, 1842 – May 7, 1910) was an Irish-born American police officer, who served as head of the New York City Police Department detective department from 1880 until 1895, who popularized the term rogues gallery.

R. Scott Decker, Phd, retired from the FBI as a supervisory special agent at the end of 2011, after 22 years of service. He spent his early FBI career in pursuit of bank and armored car robbers throughout Boston. He then gained a promotion and joined the Bureau’s fledging Hazardous Materials Response Unit in Quantico. On September 12, 2001, he led a team of FBI hazmat specialists to Ground Zero in New York City, and then joined the developing Amerithrax Task Force against the anthrax threat. In 2009, he and his team received the FBI Director’s Award for Outstanding Scientific Advancement. In 2017, the Public Safety Writers Association’s Annual Writing Competition awarded Recounting the Anthrax Attacks first-place in their non-fiction unpublished book category.