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captain, working on the Potomac River.
However, his father was already an old man and in 1875, when Albert was five years old, he died. His mother was unable to cope with looking after her four children and Albert was placed in an orphanage. There Albert was regularly beaten for being a bed-wetter. Gradually he came to enjoy the beatings and whippings he received. His lifelong sadomasochistic urges had been awakened.
He regularly ran away from the orphanage and, when he was nine years old, his mother was able to take him back home, having found herself a job working for the government. By the time he was twelve years old, however, Albert was engaged in a homosexual relationship with a telegraph boy who initiated him into a whole range of sexual perversions much to the young boy’s delight.
By 1890, when he was eighteen, Fish had moved to New York City, where he worked as a male prostitute. Gradually, though, he acquired a more legitimate skill and began to work as a painter and decorator, a trade he would follow for the rest of his life. Indeed, for a long while he seemed to become a respectable citizen. In 1998 he married a woman he’d been introduced to by his mother, and they had six children together: Albert, Anna, Gertrude, Eugene, John and Henry Fish. Later on Fish would claim to have committed his first murder during this domestic period. His family doubted this, suggesting instead that his descent into barbarity only began when his wife left him for a mentally retarded handyman called John Straube in 1917.
E XTREME M ASOCHISM
Following this desertion Albert Fish began to behave very strangely indeed. He would eat huge quantities of raw meat every time there was a full moon and began to indulge in acts of extreme masochism. He would drive needles into his genital region, he would place pieces of fabric in his anus and set them on fire and he would burn himself with red hot pokers. He made a wooden paddle and studded it with nails then asked his children to use it to beat him on his naked buttocks.
After a while his children could stand no more of this and his eldest son, Albert Jr., threw his father out of the house. At this point Albert Fish Snr. dispensed with the respectable life. He became a wandering loner, living in flophouses and supporting himself by getting odd jobs as a painter and decorator.
Over the next decade or so, from the early 1920s to the mid-1930s, Fish carried out a huge number of rapes and murders, just how many we will never know for sure. Tragically he was regularly arrested over these years – sometimes for theft, sometimes for vagrancy and on several occasions for sending obscene letters to women – and invariably sent for psychiatric evaluation, but each time the psychiatrists decided that he was an odd bird, perhaps prematurely senile, but basically harmless. And so they let him back onto the streets.
In June 1928, he carried out his most notorious crime and the one that would lead to his eventual arrest. On May 28, 1928, Fish came to the house of the Budd family in Lower Manhattan. The family was struggling financially and their eldest son Edward had placed an ad in the newspaper looking for a residential job in the countryside. Fish claimed to be a farmer called Frank Howard and offered the young man a job at the excellent rate of fifteen dollars a week. The generosity of the offer allowed the Budds to ignore the supposed Mr Howard’s rather shabby appearance, and they were happy to accept him as a benefactor. With grossly misplaced trust they even allowed ‘Mr Howard’ to take their twelve-year-old daughter Grace to a birthday party at his sister’s house.
There was, of course, no such party. Instead Fish took Grace to an abandoned house in Westchester. While Grace was outside collecting wild flowers, Fish took all his clothes off, then called out to the girl to come indoors. When she did so, she was horrified by the naked apparition that confronted her. She
However, his father was already an old man and in 1875, when Albert was five years old, he died. His mother was unable to cope with looking after her four children and Albert was placed in an orphanage. There Albert was regularly beaten for being a bed-wetter. Gradually he came to enjoy the beatings and whippings he received. His lifelong sadomasochistic urges had been awakened.
He regularly ran away from the orphanage and, when he was nine years old, his mother was able to take him back home, having found herself a job working for the government. By the time he was twelve years old, however, Albert was engaged in a homosexual relationship with a telegraph boy who initiated him into a whole range of sexual perversions much to the young boy’s delight.
By 1890, when he was eighteen, Fish had moved to New York City, where he worked as a male prostitute. Gradually, though, he acquired a more legitimate skill and began to work as a painter and decorator, a trade he would follow for the rest of his life. Indeed, for a long while he seemed to become a respectable citizen. In 1998 he married a woman he’d been introduced to by his mother, and they had six children together: Albert, Anna, Gertrude, Eugene, John and Henry Fish. Later on Fish would claim to have committed his first murder during this domestic period. His family doubted this, suggesting instead that his descent into barbarity only began when his wife left him for a mentally retarded handyman called John Straube in 1917.
E XTREME M ASOCHISM
Following this desertion Albert Fish began to behave very strangely indeed. He would eat huge quantities of raw meat every time there was a full moon and began to indulge in acts of extreme masochism. He would drive needles into his genital region, he would place pieces of fabric in his anus and set them on fire and he would burn himself with red hot pokers. He made a wooden paddle and studded it with nails then asked his children to use it to beat him on his naked buttocks.
After a while his children could stand no more of this and his eldest son, Albert Jr., threw his father out of the house. At this point Albert Fish Snr. dispensed with the respectable life. He became a wandering loner, living in flophouses and supporting himself by getting odd jobs as a painter and decorator.
Over the next decade or so, from the early 1920s to the mid-1930s, Fish carried out a huge number of rapes and murders, just how many we will never know for sure. Tragically he was regularly arrested over these years – sometimes for theft, sometimes for vagrancy and on several occasions for sending obscene letters to women – and invariably sent for psychiatric evaluation, but each time the psychiatrists decided that he was an odd bird, perhaps prematurely senile, but basically harmless. And so they let him back onto the streets.
In June 1928, he carried out his most notorious crime and the one that would lead to his eventual arrest. On May 28, 1928, Fish came to the house of the Budd family in Lower Manhattan. The family was struggling financially and their eldest son Edward had placed an ad in the newspaper looking for a residential job in the countryside. Fish claimed to be a farmer called Frank Howard and offered the young man a job at the excellent rate of fifteen dollars a week. The generosity of the offer allowed the Budds to ignore the supposed Mr Howard’s rather shabby appearance, and they were happy to accept him as a benefactor. With grossly misplaced trust they even allowed ‘Mr Howard’ to take their twelve-year-old daughter Grace to a birthday party at his sister’s house.
There was, of course, no such party. Instead Fish took Grace to an abandoned house in Westchester. While Grace was outside collecting wild flowers, Fish took all his clothes off, then called out to the girl to come indoors. When she did so, she was horrified by the naked apparition that confronted her. She
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