ISAAC VAIL

Alias: OLD IKE

Specialties: CONFIDENCE

No: 10 Last Displayed: 12/6/2022

Description:

Fifty-one years old in 1886. Born in United States. Married. Slim build.Height 5 feet 11 inches. Weight, 178 pounds. Gray hair, brown eyes, light complexion, gray whiskers. Generally wears a goatee. A tall, thin, gentlemanly-looking man.

Record:

IKE VAIL is well known from Maine to California. Of late years he has confined himself to the eastern cities, and the confidence man may be seen almost any morning around railroad depots or steamboat landings in search of victims. He has done service in several prisons, and his history would fill an ordinary sized book. I will simply give one or two of his later convictions, to assist in convicting him should he fall into the meshes of the law again. Vail was arrested in New York City on February 20, 1880, for swindling one Levi P. Thompson, a Justice of Peace of Evensville, Minn., out of $60, by the confidence game. He pleaded guilty in this case, in the Court of General Sessions, New York City, and was sentenced to eighteen months in State prison by Judge Cowing, on February 26, 1880. Vail was arrested several times afterwards in Boston, New York, and other cities. and again in New York City on August 30, 1885, for attempting to ply his vocation on the steamer Glasgow, lying at Pier 20, North River. For this offense he was sentenced to six months in the penitentiary on Blackwell's Island, on a complaint of vagrancy, as he had obtained no money from his victim. He was, however, discharged by Judge Van Brunt in the Supreme Court, on a writ on September 4, 1885. Vail's picture is an excellent one, taken in 1880.