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The Scams of Grandma Fence

Written by William Bryk on . Posted in Opinion and Column, Posts

Most industries rely on middlemen to transmit their products to the consumer. This is also true of the underworld. Most theft would not happen without the plunder’s efficient redistribution through the receiver of stolen property, popularly known as the fence. According to Herbert Asbury’s The Gangs of New York, most 19th-century fences operated small shops,
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Old Smoke: Power to the Papal: How Dagger John got New York’s Irish up.

Written by William Bryk on . Posted in Opinion and Column, Posts

Among the publishing sensations of 1836 was a book by one Maria Monk, entitled Awful Disclosures, which purported to be her memoir of life in a Montreal nunnery. Hot stuff by early 19th-century standards, Monk’s book claimed that all nuns were forced to have sex with priests and the "fruit of priestly lusts" were baptized,
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