Notes of an Itinerant Policeman

In the spring and summer of 1899, a man who had spent years among tramps, thieves and vagabonds took a job as a policeman to see the other side of the story.
Josiah Flynt, author of Tramping with Tramps, knew the underworld from the inside: its lodging-houses, its camp-fires, even its jails. Now he wanted to learn how it looked to the officer whose job was to watch it. So he joined a railroad police force as a patrolman and, as part of a three-man "flying squadron," walked a beat stretching over two thousand miles of track and through most of the large cities of the American Midwest, guarding excursion trains, picnic specials and circus crowds from the pickpockets and thieves who followed them.
The result is a vivid, remarkably candid field report from the turn of the century. Flynt sorts the criminal classes into six types, from the petty offender and the hobo to the professional thief and the "unknown thief" who protects him. He takes the reader inside the pickpocket's trade, with its "stalls," its "tools," its secret signals and its lightning-quick tricks. He exposes the bargains struck between crooks and corrupt officials, visits jails and penitentiaries, and even makes the case for police work as a calling for educated young men.
Full of period slang, sharp portraits and firsthand anecdotes, Notes of an Itinerant Policeman is a rare look at crime, the police and the open road in America around 1900, told by a narrator who knew both the road as a tramp and the beat as a policeman. Perfect for fans of true crime, American history and vintage investigative reporting.