The Brooklyn Bridge changed hands many times when George was in his prime
It looks like a sad Christmas for the last of the old-time crooks
He was hardly recognizably as he appeared in front of Judge Alonzo G. McLaughlin a week prior to Thanksgiving. The vigor had all but disappeared from the 68-year-old’s visage. He was “a pudgy little man, with only a vague collar of chestnut hair,” according to The Times Herald.
“He was a little despondent and offered no fight,” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle added, at the sentencing of a man seemingly resolved to his fate. It was life in prison for grand larceny in the second degree, amounting to one $150 check cashed on Brooklyn’s Fulton St.
George C. Parker’s latest felony had triggered Baumes Law, a habitual offender act passed two years prior that had the effect of dramatically inflating New York State’s carceral population. He entered the trial a “three-time loser,” per the regional parlance, with one arrest for larceny and two for forgery.
“He’s pretty old now,” The Times Herald noted, “and there’s no telling how he’ll survive another term in prison.” Indeed, the recidivist confidence man spent his remaining eight years in Sing Sing. Parker was, by all accounts, a popular inmate among prisoners and guards alike, owing to a never ending stream of stories mined from a long, fruitful career.
The Daily Eagle was quick to contrast the arrest to one that occurred 20 years prior, this time on New Year’s Day. The recently-appointed Brooklyn Sheriff, Michael J. Flaherty, paid a holiday to Fort Greene’s Raymond Street Prison, a castle-like stone structure nicknamed the “Gothic Horror,” due to the inhumane conditions inside. Flaherty removed his fur coat and bowler hat and made the rounds, greeting his staff.
Recently arrested, Parker borrowed the clothes and made his exit, greeted with holiday cheer from prison employees presumably unaware that the man in the fur coat was not the new sheriff.
This was the Parker whose loss The Eagle lamented. A scam artist, to be certain, but at an artist none the less. Variously known as James J. O'Brien, Warden Kennedy, Mr. Roberts and Mr. Taylor, he’d developed a preternatural knack for flipping some of the city’s most valuable real estate.
The laundry list included Madison Square Garden, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Statue of Liberty. He successfully passed himself off as Ulysses S. Grant’s hard-luck grandson before pawning off the late-President’s domed Manhattan mausoleum. But it was the Brooklyn Bridge that soon became synonymous with one of America’s greatest grifters.
Opened two months after Parker’s 13th birthday, the iconic suspension bridge was an engineering marvel – the “sum and epitome of human knowledge,” as Mayor Abram Hewitt noted in his principal address. Designer John A. Roebling gave his leg – and then life – for the bridge, his foot crushed by an arriving ferry while surveying the project. Another 27 men died during the bridge’s construction, with Roebling’s son, Washington, at the helm.
For Parker, it was prime, salable real estate. A fashionable dresser and slick talker, he littered the young bridge with “For Sale” signs and forged ownership documents, selling the bridge to unwitting out-of-towners for prices ranging from $50 to $50,000. “The Brooklyn Bridge changed hands many times when George was in his prime,” quipped The Times Herald.
Suggestions that Parker sold the bridge one to two times a week for nearly 30 years are almost certainly apocryphal, but there are several instances on record. The scheme often backfired when buyers attempted to set up a toll, in order to recoup their investment. By then, of course, Parker was long gone. “He was in an out of jail so often,” the paper added, “that whenever he left, it was taken for granted he would come back. He always did.”
He had, it seems, long gone silent ahead of his final arrest. A one-time regular in the police stations and jail houses of New York City, it seemed possible the 68-year-old Parker had left the crime life behind for good. On returning, however, he was plainly aware that his crime spree was finally over, once and for all. The Times Herald noted the tears in his eyes as he was carted off, adding, “it looks like a sad Christmas for the last of the old-time crooks.”
Sources:
Man Who ‘Sold’ Brooklyn Bridge ‘Picked Up’ Again https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/35882102/
Brooklyn Bridge’s ‘Seller’ Sent to Sing Sing for Life https://www.newspapers.com/image/59901394/