George M. White

“ When the Ocean Bank robbery had become an event of the past, it can be readily understood that I realized a comfortable sense of relief and security, as far as wealth could bring about that satisfactory state. I felt as though I was in that class of men known to the present period as Captains of Industry. In accumulating wealth I had the same object in view as have Russell Sage, John D. Rockefeller,354 J. Pierpont Morgan, Charles M. Schwab, John W. Gates, the United States Ship Building Company, and similar financiers and corporations, whose scheming to-day is to obtain something for nothing. ”

“ I cannot but smile, as I recall that spectacle in Wall Street, the centre of finance,—a night watchman being escorted to the police station, handcuffed by the very burglars who made their escape. I trow Detectives Davidson and Seymour and Patrolman Mike Conners must have had an odd set of thoughts that early morning in March.
It was too bad that I used Mysterious Jimmy Lough without knowing more of him. My willingness to oblige Detective Taggart, I have no doubt, ruined the St. Nicholas Bank job. Yet one can’t have everything coming one’s way all the time. But Jimmy Lough was a mar-plot! ”

“ Despite the discovery by the bank officials that a plot was afloat to obtain the riches of their vault, and regardless of the fact that I had lost three of my trained men, I determined to push on to success. It was in vain that I more than half regretted my decision not to “turn off the trick” on a week-day morning, while Billy was on duty, inasmuch as he had offered to take every risk. “But,” I said to myself, “why wail over what can’t be undone? It’s up to you, George, to act.” ”

“ Ellis Merrill testified to the fact that he had been the first to meet Wyckoff and Cummings at the Central House; that I was away when they came, and that he let a team to them of which I knew nothing until my return from Vermont. All these witnesses testified to my splendid business and social reputation, my honesty, veracity, and integrity. Fully twenty witnesses, all intimate friends, took oath on my behalf, to combat the testimony of a few witnesses, none of whom could swear positively to a point against me, except that I drove about the country a man who, they swore, was Shinburn. ”

“ Locked in a cell in the basement of headquarters, the prisoners felt somewhat disconsolate—not over the fact that they would find a cell up the Hudson River at Sing Sing, for that was not probable. Cash would be forthcoming, from me or some one else, and their freedom would be bought, they felt assured. It was the fact that the bonds were in the hands of Young that worried them. That was tantamount to our never seeing them again. Mark knew also that he would be secreted from his friends, as long as Young could do it, pending negotiations with the New Windsor Bank officials. ”

“ I went back to the hotel with a snug little fortune in my inside pocket, and without any fear of detection. I passed the barber shop where I encountered that sympathetic artist of the comb and brush, but not needing a shampoo, and for obvious reasons not wishing to renew our acquaintance, carefully avoided a too close scrutiny from that direction. By midnight I had my satchel repacked, the treasure hidden at the bottom, and, leaving a call at the desk for the first train in the morning, with the regret that I had been suddenly summoned away, turned in for a sound sleep. ”

“ If we remain on this side of the river much longer, we’re bound to get mixed up with the law, and the cash will go whence it came, perhaps, and we’ll have plenty of time to think it all over in the queen’s prison. Ahead we may meet death, but that I don’t believe, for I haven’t got that feeling—that premonition that sometimes tells a fellow what evil is coming to him. We’ve got to crawl on the planks, that’s the only way I can see to safety. ”

“ A long experience in studying how best to “beat” steel vaults and safes has demonstrated to me that real security for personal valuables doesn’t depend so much on high-grade safes, superior combination locks, heavily bonded employees, and the most efficient burglar-alarm system extant, as it does upon a common-sense use of the simple precautionary methods of protection with which any well-conducted banking institution should be equipped. Among the safeguards in mind is a systematic espionage upon the employees of a bank. Their habits should be known to the president under whom they serve. ”

“ See to it that bank employees be not infected with it. It is germinated in the rush of financial affairs—is given life through the constant handling of immense sums of money. Afflicted by the “callousitis,” the bank employee, who once realized a keen responsibility in handling one dollar of another’s money intrusted to his care, feels no added responsibility when he, through promotion perhaps, is called upon to manipulate a million dollars. In other words, he becomes callous to the fact that large sums of money are passing through his hands. ”

“ He has come here to ask a jury to convict them and your honor to pass sentences that shall put them in state prison, to their everlasting disgrace, the loss of their citizenship, the loss of their fair reputations, and what is more, the district attorney would further tear the bosoms of loving mothers and fathers already grievously afflicted with sorrow. All this District Attorney Lane would do, in face of the fact that he has allowed James Cummings, the actual Walpole burglar, the Walpole stolen bond seller, to go entirely free of prosecution. He dare not deny it, your honor. ”

“ The iron made hot to whiteness must be beaten into shape, into a switch, into a patent safety switch—something that would guide us from the crooked road of uncertainty to the broad thoroughfare of perfect exemption from lawful punishment for all kinds of crime. So I began looking about for the safety switch. It was suggested that James Irving, the detective who declined to accept Captain Young’s paltry offer of five hundred as his share in the New Windsor Bank reward, would make a first-class man to succeed to the chieftancy of the Detective Bureau, so I put out a few feelers. ”

“ The habits of the associates of cashiers and tellers should be known. The old saying, that birds of a feather flock together, ought to be considered in its fullest sense, and therefore a bank president should know what sort of a flock his cashier or teller seeks after business hours. That a cashier has been a faithful steward in a bank for many years is not a valid reason why he should not be kept under surveillance. Almost every bank employee who falls into corrupt ways was a “trusted” employee. ”

“ Why is it that the man Cummings, about whom we know nothing, is given a clean bill of health, while my client here, Mr. White, whose life has been an open book, is held to prove his innocence? If the prisoner Shinburn, who, with Cummings, hired vehicles from Mr. White, is guilty, why is not the man Cummings brought before the bar to answer? Instead of that, your honor, the district attorney has arraigned one of the accused and permitted the other to go, and my client, Mr. White, seems to have been brought in to fill up the vacancy. ”

“ Many hours of solitude, while others slept, I devoted to rummaging through the past in search of facts, dating them from the innocent days of my young manhood and resurrecting them from period to period, until I succeeded in compiling a life history which, I sincerely trust, will prove not only a helper to those who have the care of great sums of money devolving upon them, but will also be accepted by those tempted to depart from the path of rectitude as a warning not to be lightly regarded. ”

“ For many weeks he’d borne the torture—that mental agony that must come to the innocent man suspected of a crime by those who had once believed him to be honest beyond question.
At the verge of casting Aldrich in jail the detectives were suddenly called back to New York. It was long past the time when a tangible clew was expected from that quarter, but at last one of the government bonds taken from the Walpole Bank had turned up in the United States Treasury at Washington. It had been purchased from a man named Cummings, by a reputable business man of Scranton, Pennsylvania. ”

“ It was to be a race of corrupt purpose against common honesty,—the police Bank Ring, swift after graft, and the Pinkertons, earnest to fight for justice.
If ever there was a born fighter, Captain Jim Irving was one. He looked the part and acted it, was strong-purposed and revengeful. He wanted Macdonnell for his money and he wanted to demonstrate his prowess over that of the agency detectives.
“I hate them,” he confided to me once, “as the devil hates holy water. I’d wade through the infernal regions to beat them out at anything. ”

“ In the first place, it made travelling, which had been difficult, easier, the darkness often causing us to pitch headlong into pitfalls, and, on the other hand, the better light made a much surer mark of us, should we chance upon our enemies. As it was not within our power to control the queen o’ the night, we tramped on, taking a great chance of losing our liberty. Finally I decided to brave the bulldozing tactics of Jack Utley, and, addressing my words to George Wilson, though in a way to all, I said, “It’s sheer folly to expose ourselves like this!” ”

“ As an illustration of what might happen to a safe, I’ll mention the case of a New York business house. There had been a pestiferous leakage of money from the safe. Small amounts ranging from five dollars to four times that sum disappeared, leaving no trace of the thief. About all the employees were suspected. Every one was wondering if every one else wasn’t the thief. Finally the firm hired a private detective, and, behold, one night a man was detected red-handed opening the street door with a duplicate key, and the safe with a secret combination. The person proved to be a discharged clerk. ”

“ If he escape—well, thank Providence. Were these fallen ones called now to witness to the fact, they would unhesitatingly declare that espionage upon them would have been providential. Much woe would not now be upon them and their loved ones.
I know whereof I speak, when I say that a bank’s executive should know whether or not his bright young men are habitués of the pool-room, the horse-race track, or are in the habit of taking a “flyer” in Wall Street stock gambling. Expensive living in a bank clerk is a sufficient reason for suspecting that he is not a desirable employee. ”

“ After the ingenuity of a master cracksman has been taxed to its utmost in an effort to get the combination numbers of a presumably impenetrable vault, and success seems assured, is it not most provoking, and disheartening too, when the unexpected pops up and thunders down failure upon his head? It was thus in my attempt to possess the millions kept in the vault of the Corn Exchange National Bank of Philadelphia in the winter of 1872 and the spring of the following year. ”

“ As I saw the great safes through the open vault door, I wondered about how many days would pass ere I could be the master of all I surveyed in the vault. How different would be the conditions then. By the time the box was in Davidson’s hands, I signed him everything was lovely, and, bidding his friend adieu, we went away. What a dupe the man had been, but of how much use after all. We walked up Broadway toward the court-house to Cedar Street, where we turned to Nassau, and from there we doubled back to our rendezvous. ”

“ The sky was cloudless and the stars shone brilliantly, and as the night wore on to morning the full moon swept up from the bosom of the ocean and spread a broad expanse of silver which made it possible to discover anything within a mile or more in shape of a ship. ”

“ Amazed at the completeness of my scheme to make certain his escape, Jim “took a tumble to himself,” as the language of the crook has it, and subsided.
When we reached Delaware, the good citizens there who took any notice of us at all, saw, as they believed, a bona-fide officer of the law, stoutly handcuffed to a desperate criminal. We left the team with a liveryman there and money to pay all the bills for its use. He agreed to return it to Columbus, and we, boarding a train, in due time arrived in New York without mishap. Tall Jim was free. ”

“ Electricity can and will eat its way through the hardest chilled steel, high explosive will open the strongest door of a vault ever manufactured after the most ingenious plan of the master mechanic, bank clerks and night and day watchmen of easy morals can be corrupted, burglar-alarms may be put out of service by detectives like Tom Davidson and Joe Seymour of the New York City Detective Bureau, but there is one safeguard which cannot be broken down by the burglar craft, and that is Eternal Vigilance! ”

“ In my declining years I often wonder, if there be a Supreme Ruler,—and I believe there is,—whether, on the Judgment Day, there’ll not be an awful reckoning for those who were so unjustly against me in my vain battle to establish my innocence.
Realizing how matters were going, I asked Mr. Lynde to retain the services of Mr. Woodward, and as I bade him good-night at the jail, we’d decided to call to our aid also, ex-Judge Cushion and John M. Way, both of whom I knew very well. The bail in my case was fixed at fifteen thousand dollars, and in Shinburn’s, five thousand more. ”

“ Like the Metropolitan Hotel, a few blocks below, the Grand Central was the resort of prominent professional men and Wall Street speculators, and the class of cheap men who trail them. In directing McGurk to drive ex-Judge Stuart to me, I said nothing as to whom the other man would be, not deeming it necessary, for I would have trusted my life in the hands of my second foreman. ”

“ My next anxiety was over the detectives at the depot in Pittsburg. They were in the employ of the railroad, and had been pointed out to me by Eddie Hughes when we were there before the start for the Cadiz robbery. I was obliged to change cars there, and would have to wait an hour for the train on the connecting road. The newspaper I had read at the hotel recited the offering of a reward for the capture of the two burglars yet at large, and I felt that the railroad sleuths might be on the watch for a man about my size. ”

“ I could calmly say I would charge the bonds to the loss column, but to divide money, that had been obtained through the looting of a bank vault, with officers of the law, sworn to protect the lives and property of the people, seemed to me to be too base a proposition for consideration. ”