Panel House Thieves
Among the many dangerous and curious characters who live by their wits in a great city none is more interesting to the outsider than the blackmailer. To the reader of sensational literature the ideal is a person who holds some great family secret which he turns into money at rapidly narrowing intervals. Although this character is generally overdrawn, no one familiar with city life pretends to doubt his existence. The blackmailer is a well known character in all large cities, and certainly the arch swindler of the day.
Blackmailers are ever on the alert to learn anything detrimental to a person’s character, and let them once obtain this, they fatten on it. Men’s passions are taken advantage of by that particular class of thieves known as “badgers,” and their operations are very rarely followed by exposure or punishment. A pretty woman is the bait used by these thoughtful rascals, who know full well that where a hundred men will resist a burglar, scarcely one will resist a robbery where disgraceful publicity must surely follow.
Briefly the mode of procedure is as follows: A house is rented in a quiet side street, not far from the principal thoroughfare. One man, occasionally two men, run the house—that is, they do the actual stealing, while they have from three and often as high as a dozen women out on the street picking up the victims.