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Office of University Relations

100 Ochre Point Ave
Newport, RI 02840
Office: (401) 341-2183
Fax: (401) 341-2938
Email: srunews@salve.edu

News, Events & Media

Monday, October 06, 2008

Nevins Prize winning writer Timothy Gilfoyle will present a public lecture about his book, "A Pickpocket's Tale."

Gilfoyle explores NYC's 19th century underworld

NEWPORT, R.I. - Timothy J. Gilfoyle, acclaimed historian and Nevins Prize-winning writer, will offer a public lecture titled “Pickpockets and Prostitutes: The Underworld of the 19-Century City” at Salve Regina University on Monday, Oct. 6.

Free and open to the public, the lecture will be presented at 7 p.m. in the State Dining Room of Ochre Court, the university’s main administration building at 100 Ochre Point Ave.

Gilfoyle, professor of history at Loyola University Chicago, is the author of “City of Eros” and “A Pickpocket’s Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth Century New York,” which uncovers the hidden world of the era’s pickpockets, street children, con men and addicts by telling the story of the most notorious of them all - George Appo.

Unprecedented population growth, mass immigration, and inadequate policing created this clandestine underworld populated by confidence men, child pickpockets, teenage prostitutes, and opium addicts. The petty crimes of New York’s street urchins and gang ruffians soon generated the first networks of organized crime in the United States. Focusing on the life of one “good fellow,” Gilfoyle presents a Hogarthian expose of the rigors of life on the margins in the nineteenth-century metropolis.

“In ways Appo little understood, his life reflected the advent of the first forms of organized crime, activities linked less to ethnicity and more to new social and economic structures of the modern metropolis,” Gilfoyle writes.  “George Appo - marginalized, ostracized, and criminalized in his time, forgotten in ours - speaks to us a century later in unexpected ways.”

Events

Monday, October 6

Award-winning author and historian Timothy Gilfoyle will give a public lecture, “Pickpockets and Prostitutes: The Underworld of the 19th Century City,” at 7 p.m. in Ochre Court. A professor of history at Loyola University Chicago, Gilfoyle is the author of “City of Eros,” “A Pickpocket’s Tale” and “The Flash Press.” The lecture is sponsored by the departments of history and undergraduate studies. For more information, call (401) 341-3292.

Wednesday, October 8 to Sunday, November 2

A photography exhibit by Denny Moers will be on display in the University Gallery. Moers is known for his highly imaginative, technically innovative photographs, which encompass subject matter as diverse as New England architecture, medieval wall frescoes, ancient Egyptian tomb reliefs and contemporary construction sites. An opening reception for the exhibit will be held from 5:30-7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 8. Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Friday and 2-4 p.m. Sunday. For more information, call (401) 341-2981.

Wednesday, October 8

World-renowned Rumi translator Coleman Barks and Grammy-nominated cellist David Darling will present an interdisciplinary performance, “Crossing Borders: Persian Poetry as a Way of Understanding Modern Iran,” at 6 p.m. in the Bazarsky Lecture Hall. Barks is the most renowned translator in English of the 13th-century mystic Persian poet Rumi and has been a student of Sufism since 1977. To reserve a seat, contact the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy at (401) 341-2927 or pellcenter@salve.edu.

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