Speaking of Bunco Kelly

I came across this while I was looking for a link for the last post. Portland is my old stomping ground, and I've always thought it was a more interesting city than it gets credit for.

Portland in those days was filled with colorful characters and dastardly criminals. Bunco Kelly, the man who sold a crew of corpses, is just one of the many crime bosses who had his heyday in this bustling den of crime. Crimping was an established system as early as the 1870s, and the man generally credited as "The Father of Portland Crimping" was one James Turk, a menacing character who began by buying up some sailors' boardinghouses along the waterfront. He called himself an "agent" who would find work for his sailor tenants -- the term "crimp" is said to come from British slang for "agent," in fact -- but the reality was that he would often sell men against their will to any ship in port that was willing to pay. He had two sons, one of whom followed faithfully in his father's footsteps, while the other refused to work in the family trade of flesh for money. To punish his disobedience, the recalcitrant lad was sent to sea for several months to pay for his supposed transgressions. You know a man's a mean sonofabitch when he crimps his own son.

The movies have nothing on real-life history!