Urban Underworld

The Urban Underworld in Late Nineteenth-Century New York: The Autobiography of George Appo In Timothy J. Gilfoyle’s book, The Urban Underworld in Late Nineteenth-Century New York: The Autobiography of George Appo, we learn that life was hard being a 19th century immigrant and choosing a life of crime was sometimes, but not always, the easy way out although it came with many consequences. George Appo was one who chose the life of crime. Prison was a common place for the pick pocketer George Appo. At the young age of three his father is convicted of murdering a woman and sent to Sing Sing after which his mother abandoned him. Appo learns to steal at a young age. He really had nothing else to turn to. New York in the nineteenth century was just the place for a pickpocket to make a living. There were plenty of crowds and people crowded into streetcars. Appo was tough, but his toughness extended to his being able to take punishment from other criminals or from legal authorities, not in physically harming his victims. He worked in the realm of crooks that thought themselves "good fellows". To us now a days good fellows are people who help out others, aren’t deceiving and just are well rounded people overall. In the 19th century the so-called “good fellows” worked carefully, with agility and slyness rather than muscle; they spent lavishly on themselves and their cronies, and they never squealed, even when wronged. George Appo’s goal in life was to be the “good fellow”. In his eyes a good fellow meant a person who was a great thief, a person who would not get along with authority and a person who would not testify in court. What constituted a "good fellow" in the underworld, Appo himself wrote, was "a nervy crook" and "a money getter and spender" who never squealed on friends. George Appo’s father was sentenced to prison for life. Later on though Quimbo Appo’s sentence turned into a ten-year term in the state penitentiary in Sing Sing