Meet Detectives Hickey and Crowley

Hi All,

These are the two detectives who were waiting on the quay when La Bretagne docked at New York on Sunday 2nd December 1888 but were outwitted by Francis Tumblety when he gave them the slip at 79 E 10th Street.

THOMAS HICKEY, who became a Central Office Detective in April, 1880, is one of the most unassuming, and, at the same time, one of the bravest and most trustworthy officers of the Detective Bureau. He has been chiefly engaged in looking after the interest of Mammon in Wall Street, and how well he and his associates have done their duty is seen by the absence of reports of depredations in the financial centre. Hickey has found time to do some excellent Detective work. In November, 1880, he arrested and convicted Henry Freeman for stealing three thousand dollars from a safe at the New York Post-office. In February, 1881, a tray of diamond rings was stolen from the show window of Alexander Newburger, No. 531 Sixth Avenue. Hickey soon had the thieves, James Murphy, John Dunn, John Leonard, and "Milky," McDonald, under arrest, and their conviction followed. A month later, three thousand five hundred dollars' worth of laces were stolen from the truck of Lahey & Dubard, No. 100 Grant Street, and the thieves, Henry Lissee, Henry Hart, August Hartrott, and Marcus Raymond, were soon on their way to prison. In September, 1882, he secured the conviction, and sentences of fifteen years each, of George Earle and Ambrose Schlag, for burglary at the residences of Percy L. Pine and Colgate Hoyt, on the banks of the Hudson. The same year he arrested Henry Hart and Marcus Raymond for stealing twelve thousand dollars' worth of baggage from a Dodd's Express Wagon. In February, 1883, he convicted David Kidney and John Carmody of robbing Adolph goldsmith and his messenger, in Greenwich Street, of a cash box containing one thousand five hundred dollars; and the same year he caught Albert Viloecky, who is now serving a life sentence for beating out the brains of a countryman near Pittsburgh, Pa.

He died of dropsy in 1899, aged 50.

MICHAEL CROWLEY was taken from the Fifteenth precinct to Police Headquarters in March, 1881. He had made an enviable reputation long before, and has continued to be shrewd and energetic. The record of his arrests are: W. C. Rhinelander, of No. 243 Schermerhorn Street, Brooklyn, for attempting to kill John Drake, at No. 79 Cedar Street; Frank Frisbie, for stealing five thousand dollars from the Bank of Portland, Oregon; H. F. Graybill, for forgeries on Miller & Bros., Philadelphia, and the Savannah Steamship Company; Bernard Rose alias Russell, for a five thousand dollar burglary at Hammerslough Bros.'s at 724 Broadway and William Meineck, for the murder of Katie Braderhoff, at Elmira.

He retired on an annual pension of $1000 in May 1895, and in December 1898 was asked to organize a detective force in Havana, Cuba.

Regards,

Simon

"...and how well (Hickey) and his associates have done their duty is seen by the absence of reports of depredations in the financial centre."

When Thomas Byrnes took over at the NYPD one of the first things he did was crack down on the robberies that were occurring on Wall Street. Byrnes and his men really cleaned up that area. After a short while, the street was made safe once again for delivery boys to run errands between investment houses while carrying thousands of dollars worth of stock certificates, bonds, etc.

Byrnes set up a police office right inside the NY Stock Exchange Building. That police office and the surrounding financial institutions were connected by an early form of telephone communication. The crooks soon realized that they didn't have much of a chance of getting away with anything, and they left the Wall Street area.