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 XV. PIRATICAL CRUISE IN TROPICAL SEAS., connecting personal narrative with the financial, legal, and prison-world setting of the period. The chapter’s opening perspective is: The way to the bank vaults with their treasures had been laid open, but there remained many matters of detail to be carried out before we could enter them. There promised to be a delay of several months, but we were impatient over the prospect of delay of even six months in securing the fortunes we wanted, and which we had come to consider essential to our happiness.
This chapter is for readers following Bidwell’s memoir chapter by chapter, especially the section titled “Chapter XV. PIRATICAL CRUISE IN TROPICAL SEAS..” 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 XV. PIRATICAL CRUISE IN TROPICAL SEAS.” 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.