By the standards of history, the United States is a young country. She has no folk epic tales, but there are characters akin to Robin Hood. One of them is Sadie Farrell, nicknamed the Goat.
In the middle of the 19th century, the first metropolis of the USA, New York, attracted not only law-abiding immigrants, but also criminals of all stripes. Not surprisingly, the outskirts of the city fell under the rule of criminal clans.
The small New York Island of Wards, located at the confluence of the Harlem River with the East River, was built up with slums in the middle of the 19th century. It was teeming with thieves, robbers and prostitutes, and there was also a reception center for immigrants. The police tried not to pry into the holes here, because it was not safe to appear there.
Local eateries were a concentration of criminals, and the owners of each establishment, in addition to the "roof" from the side of any gang, had their own bouncer, capable of throwing out anyone. In one of the bars on Dover Street, a female giant named Gallus the Mage performed such a role.
With a height of about one meter ninety and a weight well over a hundred, she could knock out a drunken troublemaker with one blow. In her hand dangled a short club, which she used to hit the drunk on the head if the fist was not enough. The regulars in the bar were afraid of the Magician, but almost daily someone experienced the force of her blow.
However, this was not the worst. Gallus's trademark style was ear biting. Clutching the head of the drunkard with her elbow grip, the giantess grabbed his ear with her teeth and gnawed it off. On the top shelf of the bar were jars of marinade, in which the ears of the unfortunate were floating. Above them was the Gallus Mage Trophy plaque.
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It is not known whether the red-haired lady who came here for a drink with a young companion knew about this. But when the Magician passed her, the tipsy girl not only did not look away, but, on the contrary, looked at her defiantly.
Gallus, who did not tolerate such antics, barked abruptly, but instead of an apology she heard a choice swearing with an Irish accent. Such a thunderous Englishwoman could not stand. She swung at the rude woman, but she deftly dodged the smashing blow. Moreover, the red-haired girl contrived and with a running start hit her head in the huge belly of the Magician. The giantess gasped and sank to the floor.
The visitors fell silent at once, watching the maiden fight back against Gallus. But the battle didn't end there. With a roar, the Magician rushed to the offender and grabbed her with his hands. In the blink of an eye, the small head was in the hands of the thug, and there is no doubt that Gallus could have strangled the Irish woman. But for the murder in New York, the gallows threatened, so the giantess dug her teeth into her opponent's ear.
The girl lost consciousness from terrible pain. The magician tore off her ear and, like a rag doll, threw the lady out of the bar. Pulling up the bloody trophy, the giantess roared: "Who knows whose ear it is ?!" One of the visitors looked up from the whiskey and shouted, "This is the ear of Sadie Farrell the Goat."
The girl who dared to challenge the giantess Gallus was clearly an awkward ten. Her name was Sadie Farrell, nicknamed the Goat. She grew up in a New York slum and learned a dashing craft there.
Despite the natural fragility, by 1869 Farrell became a well-known person in criminal circles. Her robbery method was simple but ingenious. Sadie's partner walked in behind a drunk passer-by and wrung his hands, while the girl from a run beat his head in the solar plexus. When the unfortunate fell, Sadie beat him in the face with her forehead until he fainted or began to beg for mercy.
Sadie Farrell
For this method of fighting, similar to butting, Sadie was nicknamed the Goat. The girl was so confident in her style that she was not afraid to challenge Gallus. But the thug was stronger.
After the incident, Sadie lay low, licking her wounds. She was afraid to go out, believing that everyone would now point a finger at her: “Look, this is a one-eared Goat!”. But the need turned out to be stronger than shame, and a week later Sadie was walking near the West Side pier in search of profit.
Here she saw how the guys from the Charlton gang are trying to hijack a small sloop standing in the middle of the Hudson River. The girl noticed that the hijackers could not raise the anchor and budge. Then she shouted to them that she could help solve the problem. The gangsters sent a boat for her, and in a few minutes the whole company was cutting through the waves on the stolen vessel.
The leader of the gang, nicknamed Thug Charlie, was a dumb guy, and Sadie quickly managed to convince him that the two of them would achieve much more. The gang now had brute masculine strength and a feminine quirky mind. The robbers agreed to obey Sadie, and within a few days the rivers flowing in and near New York were replenished with a new pirate collective.
Capturing a larger sloop, Charlton's gang began to sail the waters of the Harlem and Hudson rivers, controlling the latter almost a hundred miles from New York. Not only small vessels, but also coastal villages became victims of pirates.
Having landed on a sparsely populated shore, under cover of night, robbers broke into the huts of the poor and the mansions of the rich and robbed everything that came to hand. Those who had the courage to resist were killed without mercy. The goat also looted local farmers, burning their buildings during the raid.
In the months that Sadie and her gang have been river piracy, they've gotten a good deal. The robbers hid the trophies in cunning hiding places. There they lay while Sadie looked for a buyer for them. As a rule, these were verified buyers of stolen goods. One of them, Marm Mandelbaum, sold tens of thousands of dollars worth of stolen goods through her store on Clinton Street. Mandelbaum had a reputation as the largest buyer on the entire east coast. It was she who was the best partner for Miss Farrell.
Marm Mandelbaum
Feeling confident in her abilities, Sadie decided that it was time for her to become not a bandit, but a corsair in a skirt. Being an intelligent girl, she read several books about famous pirates. In particular, one of them claimed that the ancient Roman pirates kidnapped Julius Caesar and released him for a large sum. This spurred Kozu to carry out the kidnapping of the New York rich man Spree. The reward was several hundred dollars.
On the other hand, she decided to establish order and discipline in her own gang. Charlton's boys loved to drink and didn't like to obey. Because of their slovenliness, Sadie often thwarted plans of robberies. Then she decided to apply a cruel punishment, which sea pirates call "walking on the board." In the open sea, a board was hung from the side, and the condemned man walked along it. After a few meters, he fell into the water and either drowned or became a victim of sharks. Of course, there were no sharks in the rivers near New York, but several of Farrell's subordinates flopped overboard from the board, and given that at that moment they were drunk, the poor fellow did not get to the shore.
In the end, Kozy's gang angered the locals. Moreover, river pirates have killed several wealthy homeowners and farmers. As a result, the residents of the Hudson Valley in upstate New York created self-defense squads. In turn, the police on several sloops began to patrol the waters of the Hudson and East Rivers. Soon, these measures made themselves felt. The pirates were ambushed, several of them were killed, and the sloop on which they were raiding was damaged.
The defeated gang decided to cease to exist. The surviving gangsters headed back to the docks of the West Side, Sadie also returned to her area. She had stolen money, and she could afford not to think about food. Heard about her river "exploits" local residents called her the Queen of the New York pier.
But Sadie no longer wanted to rob. With the available money, she opened a pub, which was attended by numerous criminal friends of the hostess. In two months of the institution's work, seven murders were committed here. As a result, the NYPD shut down this den once and for all.
However, a few days before the closure of the establishment, Miss Farrell was visited by the giantess Gallus Mage. Despite an unpleasant incident in the past, the women made up. Gallus handed Sadie the jar with her pickled ear. The pirate is said to have put her ear in a medallion and wore it on her chest for the rest of her life.
Alexey Anikin, magazine "World of Crime", №15