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Transformed; or, The History of a River Thief
1876 · 43 pages
Transformed; or, The History of a River Thief
by Jerry McAuley
Why our edition. In the free scan at least 1 word in 206 is garbled. Ours corrects the damage. The full text is public domain and free — linked below.
On this page: a summary of Transformed; or, The History of a River Thief, and our clean edition as a PDF or EPUB.
Jerry McAuley came up an orphan in New York’s Fourth Ward, ran with the gangs of river thieves who robbed ships and docks by night, and at nineteen was sentenced to Sing Sing for a crime he said he never committed. In prison a Bible and the memory of a converted prizefighter broke him; he came out a changed man and opened the Water Street Mission in 1872, the first rescue mission of its kind in America. Told briefly in his own plain words, this is the account of a thief and drunkard remade and sent straight back to the gutters he was hauled out of.
The changed life
From river thief and Sing Sing convict to founder of the McAuley Water Street Mission, who spent his life reaching the city’s outcasts.
Summary
Transformed; or, The History of a River Thief is Jerry McAuley’s own account of how a New York criminal became the founder of America’s first rescue mission. Written in plain, unvarnished language, it tells the story of a life spent in the saloons and river-front slums of Manhattan’s Fourth Ward — and of the conversion that turned it completely around.
McAuley recounts his early years as a thief who preyed on ships and drunks along the East River, his conviction for highway robbery, and the years he served in Sing Sing prison. It was there, hearing the testimony of a converted prizefighter, that his change began — though by his own honest telling the road back was slow, broken by relapses into drink and crime before the change finally held.
The heart of the book is what he did afterward: in 1872 he opened the Water Street Mission (the Helping Hand for Men), returning to the very slum that had produced him to reach other addicts, thieves, and outcasts. It became the model for the urban rescue-mission movement, and Transformed is the primary source, in McAuley’s own words, for how it began.
Who was Jerry McAuley?
Jerry McAuley (1839–1884) was an Irish immigrant who grew up on the New York waterfront and became a river thief and drunkard while still a teenager. Sent to Sing Sing for highway robbery, he was, by his own account, a hardened criminal with no religious life when he first heard the gospel in prison.
His conversion was not a single clean break but a struggle: released from prison, he relapsed repeatedly before finally breaking with drink and crime for good. He then devoted the rest of his life to the men he had once run with, founding the Water Street Mission and later the Cremorne Mission — pioneering the American rescue-mission model of feeding, sheltering, and preaching to the down-and-out.
Which edition of Transformed; or, The History of a River Thief is this?
Our edition presents a clean, readable modern rendering of this public-domain autobiography in clear type, and we link to a free source so you can read McAuley’s own account.
This is a clean reading edition of Transformed; or, The History of a River Thief — the conversion story of Jerry McAuley (1839–1884), told in his own words and first published in 1876. Born in Ireland and brought to New York as a boy, McAuley became a river thief on the Hudson and was sentenced to fifteen years in Sing Sing prison. Converted there, he went on to found the Water Street Mission in New York — the first rescue mission in America — where he spent the rest of his life lifting other men out of the depths he had known. The text is in the public domain.
The narrative was written down and arranged by Mrs. Helen E. Brown, but the account is McAuley's own, in the first person throughout. We have kept his plain, direct words and simply given them clean, readable type.
The free source is linked from this book's page.
Common questions
- Who was Jerry McAuley?
- Jerry McAuley (1839–1884) was a New York river thief and convict who, after his conversion in Sing Sing, founded the Water Street Mission in 1872 — widely regarded as the first rescue mission in the United States.
- Did Jerry McAuley write Transformed himself?
- Yes. Transformed; or, The History of a River Thief is McAuley’s own first-person account of his life and conversion. (A separate biography by Robert M. Offord collects others’ recollections of him; we carry his own account.)
A note on the text. Transformed; or, The History of a River Thief is in the public domain. What you’re buying is our edition: the careful typesetting and correction. The original text is also available free here.
That free text is already well proofread — we measure about 1.3 errors per 1,000 characters. What our edition adds is the typesetting, not a rescue: one clean file, in the formats above, without the archive boilerplate.
Related reading
On the same shelf
From the Devil to God (Du Diable à Dieu)
Adolphe Retté · 1907
Also listed in Christian Conversion Stories.
On the same shelf
The Story of a Muslim Who Became a Christian
Johannes Avetaranian · 1930
Also listed in Christian Conversion Stories.
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