Help me find a book ('Life in New York')

[DIzzIE]

Entitled In Danger, or Life in New York: A True History of the Great City's Wiles and Temptations

Written by William F. Howe and Abraham H. Hummel sometime at the end of the 19th century (1888?), the tome is supposedly an anthology of how-tos on everything from shoplifting and gambling cons to safecracking and forgery.

Searching online generally tends to yield vague citations in various articles and not much else. At some point there was a 'poorly' xeroxed copy being sold for something like $90, but even that seems to be gone now.

So how can you help? Check your local library catalogs, used bookstores, and so on :)

And please don't bother with "all of that jazz will be way too outdated by now anyway" type replies.

[DIzzIE]

The good news is that I got my hands on a microfilm copy of In Danger :) (big thanks to Wurm for helping me find a list of places which had the book).

The bad news is that the film itself isn't exactly in tip-top shape :(. I printed out full-page copies from a microfilm printer, and the quality is somewhere right below 'pissfuck poor.' It's certainly still quite readable, however, this has deeper ramifications for the OCRing of the text...going to be quite a few errors, I suspect.

As such, I'll first make a scan available that has just the raw images (that is to say, the scans of the microfilm print-outs...:-/). Afterwards, would there be any interest out there in tackling a distributed proofreading project? You'd get a chapter or two (or three) of the book in plaintext (OCRed) and be responsible for making any noticeable corrections (by looking at the original page image scans).

So who'd be willing to help me proofread? :)

(drop me an email - xcon0 a/t yahoo/com)

[Stone]

Yeah, send me on a chapter. stone (at) rorta.net

[Kakkaraun]

Of course I'll take a few chapters, you silly bitch you :).

[DoctaD]

Happy to help, Dizz... send me a few to sd5015@yahoo.co.uk

[Nox (ADVANCED)]

same here dizzy Chadderbox14 at the mail that is hot

[DIzzIE]

Thanks for your support everybody! :smile:

A tad busy right now, so it'll be maybe up to a couple weeks before I get the microfilm print-outs scanned in and OCRed...I'll send out an email/make a post when the book is ready for proofing.

[Stone]

To anybody who posted their email addy here... Did ye suddenly get spam from a few addresses that have different domains but start with 'consoon'? I've never even recieved a single piece of junk mail to my rorta.net email address but after I posted my address here I got a few. Just wondering is it here or from somewhere else? I never post my email address publicly anywhere else...

[Nox (ADVANCED)]

i havnt got any from consoon just a whole lot of want to please your woman and add extra 6"

[DoctaD]

None whatsoever for me.

[Nox (ADVANCED)]

How did you go DiZ? Do u still need help, I have a few more days off work and need something be occupied.