Charles Miller (gambler) - Biography - Early Life and Criminal Career

Early Life and Criminal Career

Charles Miller was born to a county officer in Texas around 1851. Growing up during Reconstruction, he was said to be an unruly child due to "parental indulgence". By age 15, he had begun drinking heavily and had reportedly "fallen into bad company with both sexes". He was eventually disowned by his father and began "riding the rails" until arriving in New Orleans, Louisiana. Miller began working as a "capper" for Major S.A. Doran at his Royal Street gambling house and while there began learning confidence tricks and banco steering. When he had saved $35,000, he moved to New York City and opened a small gambling den which later became known as a notorious "skinning dive" in the city's underworld. Within a few years, Miller had organized a group con men who worked as banco-steerers and green goods men out of the Astor House and the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Miller became a familiar underworld figure and, according to popular lore, he kept his headquarters at "a lamp-post on the southwest corner of Broadway and Twenty-Eighth Street, against which he could generally be found leaning".

Miller had originally arrived in New York and joined a "gambling clique" which had helped him in starting his gambling den. Once he had learned enough from them, he took another more knowledgeable partner and soon began competing with such leading swindlers as Joseph "Hungry Joe" Lewis and McDermott. Miller possessed a great deal of loyalty from his henchmen and, by directing his schemes though them, criminal prosecution against him was made extremely difficult. He also held a great deal of influence in the city legal system, due to his extensive police and political connections, which allowed considerable power to "pull the strings of the law when ever he so chose".

He was especially well known in the affluent communities of Long Branch, Nantasket Beach, Richfield Springs and other resorts frequented by New York high society. It was at these and similar areas that he directed his organization in swindling the wealthy residents. Miller spent at least half the year in high-class barrooms, restaurants and hotels, while he operated his organization during the summer. Although he is thought to have amassed at least several hundred thousand dollars in his lifetime, he spent much of his fortune living an extravagant lifestyle. He also incurred heavy gambling losses, especially on horse racing where he lost $20,000 in one day, and gave up playing faro when he lost $18,000 in one sitting at a Saratoga gambling resort.