Pat Crowe; Outlaw

Outlaw Pat Crowe, 1920

Reprinted from "Time" Feb. 01, 1926:
In Manhattan, a month ago, detectives observed the conduct of a raggedy, bearded "bummer" on an elevated railway platform; questioned him, arrested him, took him to court, whence he departed with a pocketful of money given by court attendants who thought they knew a good old scoundrel when they saw one.
He was Pat Crowe, "outlaw, author and lecturer," whose misdemeanors began with robbing Omaha streetcars in 1890 and included a diamond theft, homicidal attempts, a visit to and escape from Joliet prison, hold-ups and pilfering on railroads. Lately Pat Crowe has been going straight, the foeman of crime and drink. Pamphlets that stuffed their author's pockets said: "The best man we have this side of eternity is the man who warns us of possible danger. . . . Beware of hypocrites and deceivers who sit in high places."
Last week, a detective in Washington, D. C., was reminiscing to newspaper reporters about a plan Pat Crowe had once had (and been foiled in) to kidnap John Davison Rockefeller. Crowe had figured he could get as much as a million dollars for a Rockefeller, and he knew the market fairly well. He had once got $25,000 for a Cudahy, 15-year-old Edward Aloysius Cudahy Jr., then of Omaha, Neb., where Mr. Cudahy Sr. was engaged in the meat business. On trial, five years later, Pat Crowe had successfully maintained that young Cudahy had suggested the kidnaping himself and had received $6,000 of the ran-By coincidence, Edward Aloysius Cudahy Jr. also appeared in the news last week. Many years have passed. Pat Crowe has gone straight. And newspaper readers discovered how false was the impression they have had of Cudahy Jr. ever since Pat Crowe's kidnaping trial. Last week the boy who was once suspected of being a sly young rascal was elected President of the Cudahy Packing Co., of Chicago, after 20 years in the business, during the past ten of which, as Vice President, he "had relieved the elder Cudahy of many of his more arduous duties," so that "the recent progress of the company is due in no small measure to his efforts."

(D.R.) Ahh.. Back in the days when Outlaws could go straight and live on to represent the face of the American frontiersman...