Transformed; or, The History of a River Thief

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.

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.