Canada Bill

by Allan Pinkerton

There are some men who naturally choose, or, through a series of unfortunate blunders, drift into the life of social outlaws, who possess so many remarkably original traits of character that they become rather subjects for admiration than condemnation when we review their life and career.  

On first thought it could hardly be imagined that one who has been all his life, so far as is known, a gambler and a confidence man, whose associates were always of the same or worse class than himself, who had no more regard for law than a wild Indian, and who never in his entire career seemed to have an aspiration above being the vagabond, par excellence, could move us to anything beyond a passing interest, the same as we would have for a wild animal or any unusual character among men and women.  

But here is a man who, from his daring, his genuine simplicity, his great aptitude for his nefarious work, his simple, almost childish ways, his unequaled success, and a hundred other marked and remarkable qualities, cannot but cause something more than a common interest, and must always remain as an extraordinarily brilliant type of a very dangerous and unworthy class.  

Such was “Canada Bill,” whose real name was William Jones. He was born in a little tent under the trees of Yorkshire, in old England. His people were genuine Gypsies, who lived, as all other Gypsies do, by tinkering, dickering, or fortune-telling, and horse-trading. Bill, as he was always called, grew up among the Romany like any other Gypsy lad, becoming proficient in the nameless and numberless tricks of the Gypsy life, and particularly adept at handling cards. In fact… Read More