Train robbers

#78 Andrew McGuire

~ jpkntz

Alias Fairy McGuire (Abt. 1838-????), aka Ferris McGuire/Maguire, Eddie Watson, Andrew Connors, Edwin/Edward McGuire/Maguire — Burglar

From Byrnes’s text:

DESCRIPTION. Forty-six years old in 1886. Born in United States. Slim build. Married. Cigar-maker. Height, 5 feet 7 1/2 inches. Weight, 120 pounds. Brown hair, blue eyes, fair complexion, bald head. Generally wears a full reddish-brown beard and mustache.

RECORD. “Fairy” McGuire is probably one of the most daring and desperate thieves in America, and is well known in almost all the large cities. He served a fifteen years’ sentence in Bangor, Maine, for highway robbery; also a term in Clinton prison, New York State, for burglary.

He was arrested in New York City on March 6, 1881, in front of No. 53 Nassau Street, occupied by L. Durr & Bro., assayers and refiners of gold and silver. An officer discovered the burglars at work in the store, and while looking in the window was approached by McGuire, who commenced talking loudly, thereby giving the men on the inside a chance to escape. McGuire was arrested, and upon the premises being examined it was found that three safes were partly torn open; they also found a full set of burglars’ tools. As no connection could be made with McGuire and the people on the inside, he had to be discharged.

He was arrested again in New York City on March 17, 1881, and delivered to the Brooklyn police authorities, charged with robbing Miss Elizabeth Roberts, of Second Place, in that city. Four men entered the basement door of the house, bound the servant and tied her to a chair; then went upstairs, bound and gagged Miss Roberts, and took $3,000 in Cairo City Water bonds, numbered respectively 52, 71 and 72, also about $500 worth of jewelry. Although there was no doubt that McGuire was one of the four men engaged in this robbery, he was discharged, as the parties could not identify him, on account of being disguised on the day of the robbery.

He was arrested again in Newark, N.J., on July 5, 1881, charged with “blowing” open the safe in James Traphagen’s jewelry store on Broad Street, that city. When the officers pursued McGuire, he turned and fired several shots at them. A party giving the name of George Williams, alias Dempsey, was arrested also. McGuire was tried and convicted on three indictments on October 18, 1881, one for burglary and two for felonious assault. He was sentenced to ten years in Trenton prison on each indictment, making thirty years in all, on October 19, 1881. Williams was sentenced to two years for burglary the same day. McGuire’s picture is an excellent one, taken in March, 1881.

Fairy McGuire was only arrested a handful of times, but the nature of his crimes combined with appearances before hard-nosed judges put him behind bars for over thirty years.

McGuire was sent to Sing Sing in the early 1860s for four and a half years, though the circumstances of his conviction aren’t known. In prison he met a veteran burglar named David Bartlett, with whom he would later collaborate.

In January 1866, McGuire participated in the robbery of an Adams Express car on the New Haven Railroad, getting away with over a half a million dollars–a crime many recognize as the first train robbery in America. The other gang members included Gilly McGloin, Martin Allen, Jimmy Wells, and John Grady. The Pinkerton Detective Agency was called in, and within six months had tracked down all the gang members.

However, Fairy McGuire was not captured until after committing another robbery in Maine of the Bowdoinham Bank, in June 1866. This robbery represented another first: the first one committed by masked bandits, and the first where the bandits called each other by number. The other gang members were the aforementioned David Bartlett, George Miles White (aka George Bliss), and Owen “Rory” Simms.

When McGuire was captured in New York in October 1866, he was handed over to Maine officials for prosecution–a misfortune for him, since Maine sentencing laws were much harsher than those he would have faced if handed over to Connecticut. He was sentenced to twenty years in the Maine State Prison and released after fifteen.

Fairy (named for his high-pitched, squeaky voice) wasted little time getting into trouble again; Inspector Byrnes gives a good summary of his 1881 missteps, which culminated with his conviction in New Jersey, and the hard sentence of thirty years.

McGuire appealed the extreme term, and eventually he was released after serving fourteen and a half years in Trenton.

McGuire was arrested twice in 1897, both times on suspicion that he was about to commit a burglary. He appears to have escaped more prison time, but perhaps these scare finally discouraged him. Nothing more is known about his fate after 1897 when he was fifty-nine.

#90 Peter Ellis

~ jpkntz

Peter Ellis (Abt. 1844-1919), aka Banjo Pete, Long Pete, Luthey, Pete Emerson/Emmerson, John J. Smith, Jack Welch — Bank robber

From Byrnes’s text:

DESCRIPTION. Forty-one years old in 1886. Born in New York City. Slim build. Height, 5 feet 11 inches. Weight, 160 pounds. Light complexion, brown hair, stooped shoulders, thin face, high cheek bones, dark eyes. Generally wears a brown mustache.

RECORD. Banjo Pete, the name he is best known by (Peter Ellis being his right name), was formerly a minstrel, but drifted into crooked channels about eighteen years ago. He was considered a good man, and was generally sought for when a job of any magnitude was to be done. He was an intimate associate of all the great bank burglars in America.

He was arrested with Abe Coakley in Philadelphia, Pa., on April 28, 1880, charged with robbing the Manhattan Bank in New York City, on October 27, 1878. It was claimed that Emmerson was the man who carried out the tin boxes from the vault, and sorted the bonds, etc.; that Coakley was the man who wore the whiskers, and dusted off the shelves in the bank while Johnny Hope and his father were in the vault with Nugent; that Billy Kelly stood guard over the old janitor; and Johnny Dobbs, or Kerrigan, and Big John Tracy, who was a friend of Shevelin, the watchman of the bank, were supposed to be the men who planned the robbery; while Old Man Hope was the man who did the work. Johnny Hope (19) was convicted, and sentenced to twenty years in State prison for this robbery. Kerrigan, alias Johnny Dobbs, was arrested while negotiating one of the stolen bonds in Philadelphia, and was turned over to the Sheriff of Wethersfield, Conn., who took him back to Wethersfield prison, to serve out an unfinished term of seven years. John Nugent was tried and acquitted. Patrick Shevlin, the night-watchman, was used to convict the others, and was finally discharged. Jack Cannon was also arrested in Philadelphia trying to dispose of some of the stolen bonds, and was sentenced to fifteen years there. Old Man Hope (20) went to California, and was sentenced to seven years and six months for a burglary there.

Pete Emmerson was discharged from the Tombs, in the Manhattan Bank case, on October 4, 1880. He traveled through the country with John Nugent and Ned Farrell, a notorious butcher-cart thief, and was finally arrested in the Hoboken, N.J., Railroad depot, on Saturday, July 28, 1883, for an attempt to rob Thos. J. Smith, the cashier of the Orange, N.J., National Bank, of a package containing $10,000 in money. Nugent and Farrell were arrested also. They pleaded guilty and were sentenced to ten years in Trenton State prison, on July 30, 1883. Emmerson stood trial, was convicted,, and sentenced to ten years also, on October 30, 1883.

Emmerson’s picture is not a very good one, although recognizable. It was taken in 1880.

      If Superintendent Thomas Byrnes had written his book about famous professional crimes rather than criminals, the October 27, 1878 robbery of the Manhattan Savings Institution would likely have been his centerpiece. Not only did it involve several of the most skilled, veteran thieves of the age, but the planning of the crime involved mastermind George Leslie, who was murdered before the attempt was finally made; and the consequences of the robbery had lasting effects on the careers of all involved. It was never fully revealed; and so it was talked about and rehashed for a generation.

      Banjo Pete Ellis’s adult life centered around the Manhattan Savings Institution robbery, and he died an old man in the company of others involved in that crime. Byrnes was correct about Pete’s real name, but off the mark about his origins. He was born near Kennebunkport, Maine to Thomas and Sophia Ellis, who maintained a large family that dispersed during the Civil War years. Pete Ellis joined the 1st Maine Volunteers in 1864 as a sharpshooter, and saw nine months of action, rising from a private to a corporal.

      After the war, Ellis gravitated toward Philadelphia and New York, and by all accounts he became a minstrel performer, eventually joining a famous minstrel act, Sam Devere’s company. There’s no evidence that Ellis ever rose to the level of being a billed name. Devere happened to have an apartment in New York next to the budding criminal genius, George L. Leslie, and the two often socialized together. It can be assumed that it was through Devere that Pete Ellis was introduced to George Leslie; and through Leslie, to Marm Mandelbaum and other veteran bank thieves, like Jimmy Hope and Abe Coakley.

      Pete was said to have been in on the 1869 Ocean National Bank robbery in New York, organized by Leslie and Mark Shinburn, and executed by Jimmy Hope, Abe Coakley, Johnny Dobbs, Shang Draper, and Red Leary. Pete’s name was never associated with this crime until years later.

      In Byrnes’ entry for thief Dave Cummings, Byrnes mentions that Banjo Pete and George Leslie joined Cummings for an 1873 robbery of a bank in Macon, Georgia; and that they were arrested in Washington, D.C. and forced to return the $50,000 taken. This event can not be found in any newspaper archives.

      Pete and Abe Coakley were arrested by Byrnes in Philadelphia in April, 1880, for the Manhattan Savings Institution robbery of 1878. Byrnes had been under intense pressure to make more arrests in the case, and knowing that elements of the Philadelphia police were protecting Jimmy Hope, he took the drastic measure of making the arrest of Coakley and Ellis himself while in Philadelphia, accompanied by a local officer he trusted. Ellis was identified as the man who carried deposit boxes from the vault; though years later, Sophie Lyons wrote that Pete’s role had been to put on the fake whiskers and imitate the night watchman. When arrested, newspapers commented that Ellis had no known history. After being detained for five months in the Tombs (New York City’s Detention Center), Ellis was released.

      According to Byrnes, Ellis committed a string of robberies between 1881 and 1883 with John Nugent (an ex-policeman also involved with the Manhattan Savings job) and Ned Farrelly. However, the only time he was caught was in July, 1883, when he, Nugent, and Farrelly attacked a bank cashier transporting a satchel of money while he was seating himself on a train in Hoboken, New Jersey.

      Pete Ellis received ten years in New Jersey’s State Prison for this crime, and the public never heard from him again. After his release in the late 1890s, Pete returned to New York City and in 1898 married Jimmy Hope’s daughter, Ellen “Nellie” Hope. In 1900, he listed his occupation as “dry goods.” In 1910, he was an agent for the water company, and lived in the same house with Jimmy Hope’s sons, Johnny and Harry–a situation that continued for many years, until Pete’s death in 1919 at about 75 years of age. By that time, Pete had been the de facto leader of the Hope family for a dozen years, model citizens all.

#174 William Wright

~ jpkntz

William Wright (1831-19??), aka Roaring Bill, Charles W. Thompson, Watson — Thief

From Byrnes’s text:

DESCRIPTION. Fifty-three years old in 1886. Born in United States. Single. No trade. Slim build. Height, 5 feet 4 inches. Weight, 130 pounds. Brown hair, turning gray; gray eyes, sallow complexion. Generally wears a mustache, which is quite gray. Scars on right eyebrow, under lower lip, and on chin.

RECORD. “Roaring Bill” is an old New York thief. He has spent the best portion of his life in State prisons and penitentiaries, and is well known in all the principal cities in America. He is a general thief, can turn his hand to almost anything, and is considered a very clever man. He is credited with having served four years for an express-train robbery in Colorado; also, with robbing an Adams Express Co. money-car, out West, of $15,000.

Bill was arrested in Providence, R.I., and sentenced to four years in the Rhode Island State prison on March 21, 1881, for the larceny of a valise containing a sealskin sack and several other things from a railroad train between New York and Providence. His sentence expired on October 25, 1884.

He was arrested again in New York City on August 10, 1885, and committed to Blackwell’s Island for three months, in default of $500 bail, as a suspicious person, by Justice Murray. Wright’s picture is a good one, taken in August, 1885.

      Just before Chief Inspector Byrnes retired from the police force in 1894, a writer for a Buffalo newspaper asked him who were the most capable thieves not then in jail. Byrnes listed eight men: Rufus Minor, Joe Elliott, John Love, Ned Lyons, Gus Kindt, Mike Kurtz, Chauncy Johnson…and William Wright. None of these are surprising, except for Wright. Byrnes added, “Bill was one of the funniest, one of the shrewdest, and one of the most deceitful crooks I ever saw. It’s well-nigh impossible to fasten a crime on him.”

      Wright received the nickname “Roaring Bill” from his loud, boisterous behavior when drunk.

      Wright’s documented criminal history began–as Byrnes wrote–in 1881. However, Wright was already fifty years old by that time. Byrnes hints at some interesting details in Wright’s background, none of which can be confirmed. Still, these fragments are fascinating: Wright had been a cowboy in Texas; he had been in the regular army (but when and where is unknown); and he robbed a train in Colorado and spent four years in State prison in that state. In New York in the 1870s, he had been a member of Jimmy Hope’s gang of bank thieves.

      By comparison, Wright’s crimes from 1881 and forward seem petty. He was caught that year taking a sealskin coat from a passenger on the Fall River line train on its way from Boston to Newport, Rhode Island. He was arrested in New York, but was tried in Rhode Island and sentenced to four years in the State Prison.

      While jailed in Providence, one of Bill’s fellow prisoners did not find him so amusing. That prisoner’s name was James Dunbar, alias Dunmunday, alias Shea. Dunbar was said to have been a former member of the Jesse James gang (a claim yet to be proved). One day in the prison workshop, Dunbar grabbed a hefty hammer and brought it swiftly down on Wright’s head. Bill was saved only by his thick skull. Dunbar was thrown into solitary confinement, and through his own vile temper remained there until he died. Some say he attacked Bill for no reason other than to get transferred to an asylum from which he could escape; others say that he wanted to silence Bill, since Bill was the only one who recognized him as a member of the James gang.

      The more likely scenario is that Bill said or did something to the man to provoke the attack. A different prisoner, who testified a few years later to a committee investigating conditions at the State Prison, claimed that Bill was the worst man he had ever met; and said that Bill–who also worked as a prison hospital orderly–gave the patients indigestible food contrary to doctors’ orders.

      After his release, Bill could be found living at the Rochester House hotel in New York and spending summer days at Coney Island, working the crowds there as a pickpocket, and stealing items from the bathhouses where people changed out of their street clothes. One night in March, 1886, Bill was standing at the bar at the Rochester House when the stakes backer of the boxer George Le Blanche rolled in, despondent that his man had just lost a bout to Jack Dempsey. The backer mistook Bill Wright for a man named Tuthill, the brother of Dempsey’s backer, and thrust $2000 into Wright’s hands to settle accounts to the winner. Bill looked at the money and hesitated. However, he considered Dempsey a friend, and so he gave the money back and directed the man to visit the bar of the Hoffman House, where he knew Dempsey was staying.

      A year later, in February 1887, Wright was in Albany plying his trade, and believed he might find good pickings in the New York State Senate chamber. During a recess in proceedings, he got onto the floor of the chamber and walked away with Senator Jacob Worth’s overcoat. He was caught and charged with grand larceny; Senator Worth insured that Wright was given the maximum sentence: nine years and eleven months at Clinton Prison, Dannemora.

      By 1898, Bill was back in New York, once again working the crowds at Coney Island. However, he was soon arrested again, tried and sentenced to ten years at Sing Sing. Bill was 67 years old when his last term started. He would roar no more.