He lived on the streets, unable to hold down a job due to his neuroticisms and discrimination in general, scrapping to survive, but still paranoid enough to want to keep his nose clean. He did this until he was 19. He would frequent a church on the outskirts of the city for assistance and through happenstance would get taken in as a pianist and groundskeeper. He slept in the church's basement during this time.

At 24, he would have a catastrophic psychotic episode. The wood of the church pews held spirits and he moved through the world as if through jelly, in slow motion. He was walking through time, and electricity fizzled in his skin with every movement. The parishioners upstairs were the rotting bodies of re-animated corpses, and he needed to escape. By the time he left, the church was riddled with bullet holes, and bodies were spilled out onto the street. The law would soon follow suit, and for Kidney, it felt like he inexplicably knew when to duck and where to shoot, as though by the grace of otherworldly assistance; the talismans in his shoulder bag buzzing with energy. He fled deep into the bayou and then west into the Heartlands of New Hanover. Weakened by the experience, hallucinating and deeply alienated from humanity, he would set up camp in the woods and try living away from civilization.

This life of solitude would not last long. He was emboldened by evading capture, and realizing he could not be entirely self-sufficient and needed money, would soon return to crime as his primary livelihood. He was less paranoid, and now mostly functional, despite his psychosis.

In 1897, he would be mistakenly implicated in a crime relating to the death of Philip LeClerk, and due to his off-putting behavior and erraticism, would be transported and condemned to a lunatic asylum in Lemoyne for nearly a year. While inside, he would hear tell of a wealthy local family making sizable donations to the hospital, the Stuyvesants. Escaping with the help of Jessica LeClerk and assistant Horley, he would set his eyes on the family and plot to rob them- and with stiffened resolve, would continue as he always was: a career criminal.