The Bamberg herald. (Bamberg, S.C.) 1891-1972, March 23, 1922, Page 4, Image 4
REFORMED BURGLAR TELLS OF
ATTEMPT ON DENMARK BANK.
(Continued from page 1, column 5.)
they gathered an idea
They decided that a safe must be
built that could not be drilled, and
worked years , to develop that idea.
Finally, their efforts were crowned
with success. The automatic timelock
steel safe, built very compactly,
with seven closely fitting sheets of
steel in the door, and an extra steel
chest for money behind the door, was
-*-1? ?nf f.hoip lahnr
me piuuuti, yjL vu?t>
The safe burglar was stopped. A
drill applied to this safe simplytwisted
and sung without leaving the
slightest impression. The burglar
was up against it, at last.
News of this kind spreads like wild
fire, and it was not long before the
old iron drillable safe became a
dead issue. The bankers and merchants
of the country lost no time
getting the new automatic time lock
safes.
< After the cracksmen had made
v dozens of unsuccessful attempts to
blowf the new safes open, the confidence
of the owners and safe makers
increased by leaps and bounds. A
victory sustained after a battle of
' thirty years causes thrills of joy and
enthusiasm.
Of course, the safe and bank burg
lars realized that they were strictly
*
up against it. Consternation and
pessimism predominated among these
aristocrats of the Underworld. For
thirty years they had sipped the wine
of victory; now, the gall of defeat
^ . was theirs, and their only field was
the few remaining old iron safes that
could be drilled and blown open with
powder. And these old safes seldom
contained much money. With every
robbery their opportunities for a livelihood
diminished. The automatic
time-locker was everywhere. Banks,
stores, railroad and express offices,
every wide-awake merchant, used the
. time-locker. The safe makers capitalized
the inability of the safe burglar
to open their latest invention by
* *
> flooding the country with advertising
literature, pointing out that the bur*
> /
glars had tried and failed to open
' thftm.
Finally some of the safe burglars,
l believing the time-lock safes to be
unbeatable, deserted the "knights of
the cracksmen,x for other formsx of
^ .
criminality. Some went in for train
robbing: others became sneak
. thieves. Those who remained cracks>
. men, realizing the futility of powder
4 - f v
1 and drills, began to devote their attention
to dynamite. Dynamite was
tremendously more powerful than
powder, but it had this drawback:
like powder it had to be confined be;
fore it would produce results, and
to confine it required space. Space
meant drilling, and as this was impossible,
with the new safes, why,
dynamite was, to the cracksman, but
powder under another name.
There was one more explosive
with which to experiment, and that
was "soup"?nitroglycerin^. But
where was it to be got No safe
burglar could buy it without question,
as he did gunpowder. It was
\ . not used in the quarries; therefore
it could not be stolen.
How was it made? None of the
/ilrsm^n lrnonr onvthinor ohnilt if
l/l aV/XVOUigii ivu^/ n au; wuiug auuuv iw.
But they had the brains to know that
the manufacture of explosives came
under the science of chemistry. They
bought books on chemistry and
learned that nitro-glycerine was a
mixture of glycerine, nitric acid sul/
phuric acids. They also ascertained
that dynamite was merely nitroglycerine
mixed with certain ingredients
to assimilate the liquid!
Then they directed their thoughts
to the problem of extracting the
nitro-glycerine from the sticks of
dynamite, a precarious undertaking.
Two of the first cracksmen who tried
-were blown to pieces, and a third
man of the party had his right arm
blown off.
One might readily conclude that
fliann fofoTitiof. wrvn 1H rlotov nthpr
-VMUU^O ? VU4V4 uvvv*
safe burglars from experimenting
with sucb a dangerous explosive, but
they didn't. Fear was not in tbeir
vocabulary. They were determined
to outwit the safe maker and conquer
the time-locker.
I vividly recall the terrible catastrophe
that attended the last unsuccessful
experimental extracting process.
Eddie Howard, George Blake
.and Harry Edwards rented an apartment
in a vacant two-family house in
the surburbs of Richmond, Virginia.
T^wenty-five sticks of dynamite exploded,
the house was demolished,
' -i VI 4
windows were uiu?u um ui icor
dences three blocks away. The three
cracksmen were mutilated beyond
. recognition. Arms, legs and other
pieces of their bodies were picked up
by bewildered, mystified citizens.
Nobody understood what had
caused the catastrophe. The police
had no theory. The papers printed
a sensational story, but only the
comrades of the dead men knew that
three more lives had been sacrificed
in the battle against the safe makers.
At that time I was the protege of
the king of American bank burglars,
Eddie Porland. We were so horrorj
stricken at the fate of our comrades
i that we decided not to do any more
I
; experimenting until we learned more
about dynamite. We hired out as
laborers in a quarry at Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania, and learned so much
j from an old miner and quarryman
i there that our first extracting process
| was successful. One of the unexI
npnteri rpsnlts was that we were made
disgustingly sick. One gets a severe
headache from merely having a
bottle of nitro-glycerine in his
pocket.
We were a couple of highly elated
cracksmen as we sat back and looked
at the bowl of gold-like fluid that
was to revolutionize not only the
robbing of banks but the building of
safes. The safe maker had beeu sitting
on the lounge of victory for two
years laughing at us. It was now our
turn to don the laurels of the victor.
We had no idea how much nitroglycerine
to use, but we reasoned
that if it took two ounces of gunpowder
to blow off the door of the
I rklrl.timxi irnn en fp snrplv two Oiince?
| of nitro would certainly blast off the
j sheeting of the new time-lock safe.
We thought it best to do bur exj
perimenting outside of a city, so we
: selected a coal office near Baltimore.
' We built a small cup around the jam
j of the safe door, poured the contents
of our two-ounce bottle into it,
lighted the fuse, and ran across the
j street to await results. They came
; rapidly: First the flash before the
! explosion, which illuminated the in-,,
terior of the coal office;-then, a terrific,
ear-splitting detonation... The
I coal office was blown to pieces. God
j only knows where the safe went. All
' we could find was a piece of one of
the cast-iron rollers.
All the dogs in the world, it seemed,
started barking, and even the
ClilUfteilb uegeill uuwiug auu vavanug.
Emloyees from a mill close by came
running. We hastily made our getaway
satisfied that two ounces was
enough nitro to blow up a dozen
safes.
After, a number of experiments we
discovered that a small teaspoonful
of "soup" was sufficient?and we
were ready for banks.
The first bank selected was the
Farmers and Merchants Bank of
Deninark, South Carolina. I spent
three nights in the town lqoking the
job over. The night watchman of the
town invariably went home every
night at 12:30 for his supper, and
did not return until he had taken a
nap?usually about three o'clock. He
was very methodical and regular, so
we naturally assumed that his movements
would be the same every night.
About 1 o'clock we got to the bank.
It was a one-story granite building
with great barred windows four to
six feet high. Before we jimmied our
way into the front door we decided
to go around all the windows and
flash our light into the-bank for the
purpose of ascertaining whether or
not anybody was inside, this being a
1 j U..?
! common procedure wiuu an uaun. uur|
glars.
We had just got around to the last
window when we heard somebody
coming down the street. We thought
it was some negro on his way home,
so we discontinued our. li'ght-flashing
and waited. The walker stopped at
the bank, tried the bank door, and
then started around the bank trying
the windows. We knew it was the
night watchman, and crouched down
in the rear of the bank and waited
his coming. He tried the windows
one after another as he came, a'nd we
realized that he had seen the flashlight
illuminations in the bank. We
wondered' as we waited for him to
round the cornel the bank where
we were crouched what he would do
if he knew that possible death was
waiting for him!
Finally he arrived, and quick as a
flash of lightning four guns were
shoved in his face and simultaneously
the command, "hands up!" was uttered
by all four of us. His breath
came and-went heavily, like the exhaust
of a locomotive going up a
grade. He did not put his hands up,
and we told him if he didn't get them
\
up, and get them up damn quick,
there would be something doing. It
was perfectly obvious that he was
scared. Suddenly he dropped to the
ground in a aeaa rami, overcome
with fright, and then we all laughed.
A nearby pump probably suggested
this thought and we all probably
started for the pump at the same
time. At least our intention was
momentairly distracted from the sixfoot
watchman on the ground. Here
indeed was an unusual sight, a unique
experience, a brave (?) guardian of
the law on the ground, collapsed
with fear.
Suddenly he was up on his feet
and gone, dashing down the main
street, yelling like a mad man! My
pals and I dashed after him, barely
a step behind him all the way. At
the end of the street was a hotel, a
frame affair of three stories, with
about fifteen or twenty steps leading
up to the poroh. The watchman let
out another terrific yell and dashed
up to the steps just ahead of me. A
negro porter saw him coming, heard
the yells, became alarmed himself,
and joined the big six-footer in terrorized
refrain. We quit the town immediately,
knowing well that the
night was lost, and further, that it
was only a matter of time until that j
cop would arouse the entire town and!
have a posse on our trail.
A few days later we read in the I
Charleston papers the officer's version
of his encounter with desperate
bank burglars. The bank voted him
a reward for his courage in driving,
the bandits out of town. So goes
the world!
The incident delayed for a day or
two our first attack on the timelocker
safe. We were compelled to i
find another job at Brunson, South
Carolina. The First National Bank
was the chosen victim and it had a
very beautiful time-lock safe. It
would not be long before we knew
h'Ow well "old nitro" would perform
on the safe-makers' masterpiece. We^
determined not to permit any fainting,
hysterical cops to interfere with
this operation; so before we went
near-the bank we hunted the town
over for Mister Chief of Police, and
found him industriously trying the
/*orkT>o nf ail the stores. In resDonse
to our command to ut up his hands
he inquired if we new who he was.
We took his gun off him and walked
him down to the hank, telling him on
the way that we were there to rob
the bank, but would treat him with
courtesy and consideration if he be'haved
himself like a gentleman and
didn't give us any trouble. He trembled
and shook like.a shimmy dance,
but was as docile as a lamb. We tied
him up, feet together and hands behind.
and then forced our entrance
through the front door of the bank.
The vault door was easy, thoughthe
explosion was quite loud, and the
chief let out a. yell. One of the boys
took an apple out of his pocket an4
fed it to the chief to calm and subdue
him. The much vaunted and
widely advertised automatic timelocker
was a tough proposition. It
required twenty-one explosions be**
Z 4- />T%Ari Kllf TT?Z* finollv
lore Ave sou jll oyc?, uu<- ??iw>u>v
wrecked it after two hours of blasting,
and once more the ingenuity of
the cracksman prevailed over the i
skill of the safe maker.
\
Brother cracksmen of the Underworld
quickly sought us out and anxiously
sfelicited information as to how
we did it. We told them, and it was
not long before every bank burglar
in the country was a user of the destructive
"nitro," and the automatic
time lockers were being knocked over
like pins in a bowling alley. The
safe makers had to go to work again.
The bankers no longer went home at
nights and slept the sleep of the unworried.
I haven't any idea of the amount of
money that the bank burglars got the
first year we mastered the time-lock
safe, but an approximate conception
can be got by figuring the loot of my
gang. We robbed eight banKs in
Virginia, and North and South Carolina,
for a total of $250,000. I know
of at least ten other gangs that operated
that year, so a conservative estimate
would be $2,000,000?and not
a robber caught!
For ten years the life of the cracksman
was simply one robbery after another.
The safe maker was eliminated
as a competitive factor. The |
Underworld felt and believed that {
the time-lock safe was the last word
in safe building. By no stretch of the
imagination could they picture the
safe maker designing anything that
could resist the force of the '"old
soup" (nitro-glycerine is called
"soup" because it looks like vegetable
soup).
Well, we had that beautiful dream
for ten years. We had ten years of!
continued success, no worries, no j
troubles, ten years of nothing but j
sunshine and ease with never a pes-j
simistic thought of the future. We
thought we had beaten the safe builder
for all time.
And then we woke up one morning
to find the screw-door safe staring
us plumb in the face!
This is the greatest piece of mechanical
safe-making ingenuity ever
devised, a great, stolid, Gibraltarlike
hunk of steel, the door being
screwed in like one puts a screw in
a piece of wood. A masterpiece! I
doff my lid and bow humbly to the
benius of the American safe builder.
He is a great fellow, and I'm sure
that my brothers of the craft that
was will eciio my senumenis.
Burglars soon found out they were
up against a problem. This screwdoor
safe was so compactly built that
a tablespoonful' of nitro-glycerine
would consume an hour finding space,
and since the cracksmen cannot work
over three hours, and requires at
least three hours before daylight for
his getaway, he threw away the
"soup" and said, "Daylight hold-ups
for me, from now on!"
Every bank burglar in the country
is now a daylight stick-up man!
That is the result of the competitive
battle of fifty years between the
cracksman and the safe builder.
Genius has predominated, and by
I predominating 'has created a new
form of criminality. Or, we might
say. it is evolution, the evolution of
brain power. i
Three years azo when the cracksman
first started to work as a daylight
hold-up man, he had absolutely
no Underworld competition. The
hold-up of a bank in broad daylight
had become a rare thing since the
day of the Western outlaws. It was
called a new thing in the crime world,
and elaborately featured by the press
of the country. It was great news,
rare meat for the city editor, and .
how they did play it up! Nothing
buf the front page, column after
column right across the sheet.
Little did the press realize that it
was unconsciously assisting in the
creating of a new type of bank holdup
man?a type that is far more
dangerous than the cracksman.
I am speaking of the yellow, unstable,
drug-crazed gangster, the
murdering cowardly thug that dares
not go out unless his system is
charged with dope, and who shoots
to kill at the least provocation. He
reads of the success of the cracksman
as a hold-up man, day in and
day out. He reads of few arrests;
and it is a natural consequence for
him to create in his mind a mental
n f JiAnr flOCllf t Vl O V) ol <^_11 n i<B
pik/tui t V/4. liV'TT V^UkJi J.J VUV UVAVI. AM
done. He reasons: "Others are doing
it successfully, why not I?" And he
is out on the highroad holding up
hanks, sticking up bank messengers,
j payroll messengers, and jewelry
stores, and murdering his victims in
| cold blood at the least indication of
I resistance.
I
| The cracksman uses a gun only as
i a last resort. It is is a sort of un|
written law among clever crooks that
a gun should be pulled only in selfdefense.
I know many high-class
prowlers (house burglars) that never
carried a gun.
I read in the paper an account of
a hold-up, and nine times out of ten,
I can tell you what caliber crook pulled
the job. Let me illustrate with
some episodes but of my own career.
I have probably participated in at
least seventy-five bank burglaries. I
dare say that I never fired over
twenty shots in all my career. I've
I stuck up fifty night policemen. Hundreds
of persons have passed banks
Willie 1 was worh., ana yet ue?ci a
Shot from my gun or the guns of my
j pals has ever penetrated the skin of
man, woman or child.
The only :black mark on my record
is that of an experience with a
' colored gentleman who refused to
[obey my command-to put up his
hands one night while we were robbing
a bank at Mullins, South Carolina.
Instead of obeying, he turned
and ran, yelling at the top of his
voice. I followed, shooting in the
air to scare him, and thinking he
would stop.. He ran into a stable,
got into a stall with a mule, and
was kicked almost to death! I picked
him up unconscious, laid him on
the steps of a doctor's house, and
went on my way.
Bank hold-ups have been easy for
two years. Organized gangs have
been looting steamship piers and
railroad yard^ . In 1919-20, transportation
companies lost over $50,000,000
worth of goods. In some
cases trucks were driven into the
yards, loaded with goods, and driven
away again, the looters acting right
under the nose of the authorities. In 1
several instances a barge was run
up alongside of piers and the entire
x -L - ~ ?V?f no rc AVQ/1 f A
contents <Jt HClgUi. Lai o iuuilu tu
the barge.
The success of these thefts is evidence
that the mentality of the Un.
derworld has improved. Contr&rily,
that of the officials who are paid to
protect the lives and property of lawabiding
citizens from criminals, has
stood still?if it has not deteriorated.
I am perfectly astounded at the
stupidity of our detectives, bankers,
and society in general.
Everybody seems to be groping
helplessly in the dark, shaking their
heads, and talking* about how this
problem of the "crime wave" may
i
be solved. Personally, 1 can see no
problem. The stupid, asinine methods
that societv has employed to com
bat the crime wave only makes it appear
to be a problem. Nobody seems!
to realize that the old Underworld
has passed away since the advent of
prohibition. Nobody seems to realize
that there is a new Underworld,
and that the old police methods are
no longer of use in dealing with the
new Underworld with its new methods
of crime.
Freshly Made.
Mike called for a pint of beer and
tossed a bright new half crown on
bar counter.
The barman looked suspiciously at
the coin, weighed it in his hand, then
tested it several times on the counter.
"Look here old sport," said the
barman. "Where did you get this
thing from? It's not a good one."
"What do you mean?" returned
Moke. "Be sure it is a good one.
Why I only made the blithering thing
this morning." ,
SS&/H W
?
We cordially invite yo
headquarters for busines
we can be of service.
Our loyalty to the co
whether or not you are a
I We are here to be "b<
any time will be a pleasu
|
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WHEN "Just D
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so they named her M:
peace in the family sh?
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This Greatest of El<
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PfE&p SQK IBBBL BBK
avid" was published
it it the most adorable
ild ever written; then
by the same authoress
ry by storm; now she $
darie," which is better
was Mary to her staid,
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she was Marie;
ary Marie, and to keep
; had to develop a dual
h the two names. *
s* J
>anor Porter's Many
Stories Starts
Herald 1
WEEK
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