Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison. English-only reading by default; switch among English, Chinese, and Spanish, or compare languages side by side.
This chapter develops the memoir’s account of Chapter I. HAD THERE BEEN WISDOM THERE?, connecting personal narrative with the financial, legal, and prison-world setting of the period. The chapter’s opening perspective is: We lived in South Brooklyn, near to old No. 13, the Degraw Street Public School. To that I was sent, and there got all the education I was ever fated to have at any school, except the school of life and experience.
This chapter is for readers following Bidwell’s memoir chapter by chapter, especially the section titled “Chapter I. HAD THERE BEEN WISDOM THERE?.” It is most useful for readers interested in financial crime history, nineteenth-century banking culture, criminal justice, prison memoir, and the social setting of the period.
Read “Chapter I. HAD THERE BEEN WISDOM THERE?” as a historical memoir rather than guidance. The banking procedures, legal assumptions, public reputation, social judgments, travel conditions, and prison practices described belong to Bidwell’s nineteenth-century setting and may not match modern institutions.