Piper, The Forger

by Allan Pinkerton

I think I can best relate the romantic history of this remarkable criminal by extracts from his confession to me, in the summer of 1876, shortly after his release from prison, and when it was hoped his professions of reform would prove all they then promised:  

“I was born in Cynthiana Township, rear Paris, Kentucky, on the old Topper plantation, in 1828. My father was a gentleman in whom courtesy and courtliness were inborn graces. My earliest recollections are of this man, his wife, my mother (a brilliant French lady he had married in Europe), flowers, happy negroes, and countless lady and gentleman visitors. This picture passed away when I became five years of age and my mother died. Her death brought dark days to me, and the removal of our family to Brooklyn, where, after a few years, my father married a wealthy lady of that city, who was—well, what stepmothers usually are. She was not my mother, and besides, there were two crops of children, and they cannot very well be mixed like two grades of wheat in a Chicago elevator.  

“My father was wealthy for those times, worth probably two hundred thousand dollars; and having no home in reality, I was not long in spoiling. My father was socially a favorite, and, as he took me almost everywhere with him, by the time I was fourteen years of age I was a regular pet of the lawyers,… Read More