Bidwell's Travels

The memoirs of the American Austin Bidwell, published in 1897. Born in Brooklyn, the author goes to work young in a Wall Street office, acquires a taste for gambling and easy money, and is then drawn in by a New York chief of detectives who sells off stolen bonds. After frauds in Europe and Brazil, he and his brother George, with two accomplices, get the Bank of England to accept forged bills of exchange in 1873. Then come the flight through Ireland, Spain and Cuba, the trial in London, the life sentence and the long years in Chatham prison. A vivid account of 19th-century finance, police and prisons.