EXIT OF TRAIN BANDIT.

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 292, 9 December 1899, Page 5 (Supplement)

EXIT OF TRAIN BANDIT.

DISAPPEARANCE OF A PICTURESQUE FIGURE.

It is held by railway men and express agents whose lines traverse Arizona,U.S.A., that the efficacy of a law affixing the deatii penalty to a crime against property has been proved by the utter decadence of the once thriving industry of train-robbery. There was a time when it was a common mode of making a living. Within a year of the passage of the law defining it as a capital offence it had dwindled in Arizona by more than 50 per cent. The men of the road

have gone back to robbing stage coaches, or taking their chances iv looting detached express offices in small towns. Ninety per cent, of them think too much of their necks to run them1 into almost certain nooses.

There has been, however, one curious result of the law. While it has enormously decreased the number of train robberies, it has increased the percentage of fatalities attendant upon them. This is due to the fact that with capital punishment hanging over them, only the most desperate kind of criminals have been willing to engage in looting trains at all, and once in it they were prepared to stop at nothing. In these days the slightest show of resistance is met with instant death. The robbers say that as they are going to be hanged anyhow if caught, they might as well be hanged for something worth while.

Eight .rears ago in Arizona there was a train robbery a month, and this is a large number when the comparatively few. railroads in the territory and the few trains are taken into consideration. Into such a condition of desuetude has the pursuit descended that it lias now been more than a year since anything like a "decent hold-up" has been accomplished.That which is true of Arizona is true also of California, in which State the law covers trainwrecking as well as train robbery. It is also true of nearly all the States in which, train robbery once flourished. Mot all these States have prescribed the death penalty for the. crime, but the robbers seem to think they have. The inactivity of their brethren in the far South-western States has discouraged them. In Texas, for instance, there has been no coup of this kind worthy of the name for more than a year, yet in Texas less than ten years'ago there were live distinct bands of robbers operating simultaneously. Very few of these men are now alive. Most of them were killed before there was a chance to send them to the penitentiary. So far as records extend, and they are believed to be reasonably complete, the various railways and express companies having kept a careful account of their losses iv this way, as well as of their numerous encounters, the first train robbery in the United States occurred iv Indiana. •*• THE YEAR WAS 18GG. One n'igtot in September an express on the Ohio and Mississippi Road slowed up at Brownstown. This place is 90 miles west of Cincinnati. Two men climbed on the loeonfttive, covered the engineer and fireman with revolvers, and conversed pleasantly. They were heavily masked. As they talked their companions uncoupled the express car and the engineer was forced to haul it five miles down the road. Here the car'was entered, the messenger obliged to unlock the safe, and £2500 was taken. The affair caused a fever of excitement all through the country, and the railway people sa-w at once that a new and terrible war had begun against'them. For this crime the members of a family named Reno were held to be responsible, but there was no evidence: of their guilt, and they were not molested.

A few mouths later two boys, inspired, by the fire of imitation, held up a train OH the same road and near the same point. They were taken in haud by their parents, who delivered them to the authorities along with the fGOO they had stolen. No particular punishment was given them. This was the second train robbery. A year later three Re-no brothers, Frank, Jesse.and Sin, along with a relative named Anderson, captured a train on the Indianapolis, Madison, and Jeffersonville Road at Seymour, which was their home. They threw the express messenger out of the car, broke open the safe, and got £27,000, with which they fled to Canada. In that country; after a long chase, they were overtaken arid forced to surrender. Long extradition" proceedings followed.

While these were in progress six young fellows'of Seymour organised a band for the purpose of robbing trains. They proposed to go into the business thoroughly and on a large scale. Their plans were per•fected to the extent of selecting their hid-ing-places and means of escape, when they were betrayed by an outside confederate, who was to shnre in the plunder, although he had not been asked to do any of the work. They stopped a train and found themselves face to face with a resolute force of armed deputies. They were captured without trouble and locked up.. At daybreak nest morning; 100 citizens of Seymour took them from their cells and '■'

HANGED THBMTO A TREE a mile west of the town.' Soon after this lynching the three Renos and Anderson were brought back from Canada. They were lodged- in the g-aol at New. Albany, Ind., for safe keeping, the temper of the Seymour folk making it unhealthy for train robbers in their neighbourhood. Later events showed that the precaution was useless. The trouble with New Albany was that it was not far enough away. A lynching party which had been formed at Seymour for the reception of the Renos went to New Albany 1000 strong, battered dowu the gaol door, and made their way to the cells occupied by the men. Here followed a long and desperate fight. The cells were so small that not many of-Hie mob couldf get. at the prisoners, and they did not want .t.o N shooj; them. The unarmed but undaunted ruffians fought with all their strength, and it was half an-hour before, battered from head to heels and covered with blood,1 they were dragged out and hanged. ■"-;

The lynching of these ten men: in Indiana appears to have discouraged prospective robbers for a little while. They broke out again, however, in 1870. On July 21. of that year eight men tore up the track of the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific JRoad near Council Bluffs,- lowa. The train::was railed, the engineer was killed, and nToi'e ■than a dozen passengers ,were badly injured. As the crash came the outlaws rushed from hiding-places near the road-bed, robbed their wounded and terrified .victims, Rnd took £1200 from the express car. The Council Bluffs affair was reasonably successful from the criminal point of view, yet, strangely'enough, it was followed by a long stagnation in the business.' It was 1575 before the country was startled by an attempt to rob a Vandalia line express ear at Long Point, 111. A

■In this year the James Jj,oys, who were genuine all through, came to the front as train robbers. They had been previously merely raiders of banks and stage coaches. Tl|ey forced the station agent at Gadshili, Mo., on the Iron Mountain Road, to flag a passenger train* which they held up with little trouble. Their booty was £2500, taken from the passengers and express messengers alike. A year later.at Oterville.Kan., they robbed a Missouri Pacific train of £3000. On October 7, 1577, the James and Younger boys took £7000 from a Chicago and Alton train at Glcudale, Mo. Their biggest haul was made at Muncie, Kan., 'n December, 1878, when they held up a Kansas Pacific train, oinaiued £11,000, and fled

into the Indian territory. They re-appeared as train robbers in 1881. At Winston, Mo., they boarded a Rock Island train. Conductor Westfall,- who made some' show of resistance, was shot dead by Jesse James. A' passenger named McMillan was killed by a random bullet- They got only £ 1000 on this raid. Two months later they went through a Chicago and Alton train at Glendale and rode away with £4000 in money and jewels. This was the last train-robb.ing, exploit of the James boys. Jesse was t shbt by the Ford brothers next year, and Frank fled into Tennessee, subsequently'standing trial, getting an acquittal, and settling down to a quiet life. He is now the doorkeeper of. . a theatre in St. Louis. In the latter part of the seventies train* ! robbing was in a flourishing coudition iv . many parts of the South, and West. It waa in 1577 that one of the MOST SUCCESSFUL JOBS Of this kind ever planned was put into cxc- ! eution.Out at Big Springs, Neb., a party pfi I Texas cowmen, headed by Hank McDonald, i boarded an overland train on the Union I Pacific without attracting especial atteni tion, got into the express car, and helped j themselves to £22,000. A long pursuit folj lowed, three of the robbers were killed,, and; £8000 of the money recovered. The rest of !it and the nien who had it, with one exception, were never heard of again. The afterwards famous Sam Bass of Texas was a' member of this gang. He got back to hia own State, organised a band, and for soma years terrorised a large extent of country.. He was killed by rangers in a running fight in the eastern part of the State. Of all the bloody men on the road indu* bitably the shrewdest and one of the boldest! was John Sontag of California. He wa3 trapped and shot in the Sierra Nevada, but not until he had sent fdur detectives to their long account. He seemed :to nave a genius for detecting detectives, and liked to kill them. His passing left but one band of organised train robbers in the country. This gang was composed mostly' of the famous Oalton brothers, a family of dead shots, which had the peculiarity of shooting rifleg with the rifle butt below the; hip. Holding! a gun in this way, Bill Dalton would ac» count for three men in ten seconds at a distance of 200 yards. He was nothing lessthan phenomenal, and only a shade-bettea than his kinsmen.- .. . • •■■:'■, .."■■ It was ten years after train robbery became a common enough crime before tUe lone robber made his appearance. The .first instance of the kind was the braining ot Express Messenger Nichols orv ft Rock island and Pacific train hear Joliet, 111. Hid assailant was captured, but for some reason was not hanged. He is now doing time in, the penitentiary. Some time afterwards, near Pacific, Mo., one man bo'uhd and gagged an express messenger named Fotherlng* ham and took from the safe £20,000. This individual's name was Wittrock, but tie was much better known as "Jim Cuinmings," under which alias he "wrote; niantf letters to the newspapers while evading He was finally captured and served a term in the penitentiary. Almost: all a£ the money was recovered, Wlttrbck having been kept too busy dodging, to spend mueU of it. Equally daring was t the exploit of Oliver Curtis Perry, who gained entrance to a New York Central express car at Syracuse, intimidated the mes.sel.gex-, abstracted £5100 from the safe, pul!«£ tte bell cord, and, when the train sloswttl, jumped dfE into the darkness.

The first successful attempt with dyna« mite was made in 1889 near Glendale, Mo. Four masked men blew open an armoured car and got £10,000. Two of'them, Hedgepeth and Slye, were arrested and convicted. So effective was'the use of the explosive upon this occasion that it may be said to be the parent of all subsequent: dynairiite robberies. In two years a stick of it be*' came'as much a part of the robber's outflC as his pistol. r ■'

Probably the most unsuccessful attempt at train robbing in air the annals of the craft occurred at a water tank five miles south-east of El Paso, Texas, in 18S8. The, east-bound Southern Pacific passenger train; stopped there one night to fill the boiler. The large door of the express car stood wide open, and inside was a messenger known to associates as "Windy" Smith; His lamp was unlighted. To the door came two mfeu, evidently new to the business,' who /stood: on the prairie, peered into the dark interior, and called upo| whomsoever might be there to throw up Ills hands'. Smith, being totally invisible to them,'picked up a shotgun, poked it within three feet 'of, themi and calmly killed them both.