I was all ready, of course, and when my husband drove up in a sleigh, wonderfully well disguised, wearing a handsome fur coat, and carrying a woman's fur coat on his arm, I made my escape and joined him. I will tell the details of how my husband and I got out of Sing Sing in a subsequent article.
We both went into hiding and made our way to Canada, where Ned, being short of funds, broke into a pawnbroker's safe and helped himself to $20,000 in money and diamonds. With these funds in our pockets we returned to New York, and I kept in hiding as well as I could until my husband, with George Mason and others, robbed the bank at Wellsboro, Pennsylvania. Shortly afterward my husband was arrested while engaged on a job at Riverhead, L. I., and $13,000 worth of railroad bonds were taken from his pockets.
My husband could not let drink alone, and one day he had a street fight with the notorious Jimmy Haggerty, a burglar, who was afterward killed by "Reddy the Blacksmith" in a saloon fight on Houston Street and Broadway. During the fight between Haggerty and Ned Lyons Haggerty managed to bite off the greater portion of my husband's left ear. This was a great misfortune to him as it served as a means of identification ever after. On another occasion, in a drunken dispute, Ned Lyons was shot at the Star and Garter saloon on Sixth Avenue by "Ham" Brock, a Boston character, who fired two shots, one striking Lyons in the jaw and the other in the body.
My husband soon had the bad luck to be caught in the act of breaking into a jewelry store in South Windham, Conn. As soon as he knew he was discovered, my husband tried to make his escape, and the police shot him as he ran, putting one bullet hole through his body and imbedding another ball in his back.
He was also caught in the burglary of a post-office at Palmer, Massachusetts, where they took the safe out of the store, carried it a short distance out of the village, broke it open, and took the valuables. As I have already said, the men had found me very helpful and insisted on my accompanying them on most of their expeditions. Always, if an arrest was made, I was relied upon to get them out of trouble. This took time, money, and resourcefulness, and kept me away from my little ones against my will.