CHAPTER XVIII
DISPOSITION OF OCEAN BANK LOOT
I have no doubt that my readers will readily believe that shortly after the opening of the Ocean Bank vault on the morning after our departure there was a considerable stir in the financial world, especially that part of it located at the corner of Fulton and Greenwich streets.
The two hundred thousand dollars that we left on the vault floor enabled the bank to meet its engagements at the clearing house that day; the police closed the bank’s doors early in the day, thus preventing a run; and the bank did not fail. That is, it did not fail then.
On that Sunday afternoon, after we had removed a million and a half from the vault, and paid a visit to Jack McCord’s house as related in the last chapter, he went out of his house on that day, breaking his custom in this respect. He hunted up the other members of the Ring, and notified them all, including Captain Irving, to be at headquarters by nine o’clock the next morning without fail.
At that hour one of my coaches with my finest team stood in Crosby Street near Houston. My best driver held the ribbons over them. In due time came the notice to headquarters of the robbery of the bank. Captain Irving and Detectives McCord and Kelso thereupon hastened to the corner of Crosby and Houston streets and boarded my coach. The horses were started at their best gait, and the detectives were soon at the scene of the loot.
By this time the robbery had become generally known in the vicinity of the bank. The bank’s offices were filled with a mob of shouting depositors and owners of boxes, who were clamoring for their money and valuables. Irving turned them all out and locked the doors and then began to question the bank officials. You will readily imagine that the information which he derived from this questioning was of great benefit to him--it told him so much that he did not know.
The detectives listened to the officials’ stories, looked wise, consulted, and then determined that the job was the work of a Western gang of burglars, which it had long been rumored was coming East. Irving said that guards would at once be placed at all ferries and railroad stations, and assured the bank people that it would be but a day before the robbers would be bagged and the loot returned.
The confident manner of the detectives reassured the bank officials, who began to feel that things were not so bad as they had at first appeared. Irving then attended to the returning of the safe deposit boxes to their owners in the crowd out in the street. The reception of one of these boxes was generally followed by wails of sorrow, long and deep. Then, after cautioning the bank officials to give nothing to the press, but to refer all reporters to headquarters, the detectives left, to place the cordon about the city.
And, to blind the press and the police officials not in the know, this cordon was placed, and many a policeman watched a ferry-house or a railroad station for mythical Western crooks. Yes, the members of the Bank Ring put in their share of this kind of watching, too, though they knew at all times where to find the looters. Indeed, I had a long talk with Jim Kelso while he was stationed at the Harlem depot to catch the robbers.
On the afternoon of the same day that they had visited the looted bank, Irving, Kelso, and McCord met Shinburn and myself at Stetson’s in Central Park. Here we had a wine dinner, and Irving then narrated to us the happenings at the bank that morning. Of course, Shinburn and I expressed the wish that the police might capture that bad Western gang. But the detectives were more particularly interested in the amount they were to get out of the robbery.
Shinburn and I had gone through the stuff we had taken, and found that the precious sealed package, of which Taylor had told us, contained non-negotiable paper, upon which a customer of the bank had borrowed capital. No doubt the customer would have been pleased had the package never been heard of again. We had made a tabulated statement and, taking it with us, showed it to our table companions. It ran as follows:--
Cash taken away $125,000 Cash left in bank vault 200,000 U. S. government bonds--then above par 1,475,000 Miscellaneous bonds, marketable 100,000 Western R. R. bonds, unsalable 850,000 ---------- Total $2,750,000
In running over the list, McCord exclaimed: “Cash left in bank vault, two hundred thousand dollars! What in hell do you mean by that?”
“We left that amount there,” I replied.
The detectives looked at me in wide-eyed astonishment. “Were you crazy?” asked Kelso.
“No; just keeping a promise,” I replied. “It is nothing that interests you people. But it’s funny that the bank folks didn’t tell you about it.”
“Well, they didn’t,” said Irving.
This worried me, for I feared that the package had not been found and that we had left it to no purpose. How this could have happened I could not understand, as I had seen Taylor that morning, and told him just where I had left it, and did not believe Taylor would hold it out. However, it was found and used for the purpose intended. I learned this from the papers next morning as well as from Taylor, later. How the press got the news, I don’t know; but they got it.
Two or three days after the robbery we were told that there was a possibility that the bank might call in the services of the Pinkertons, who a few years before had established their New York branch. The Bank Ring also had some fear of this; and Irving was insistent in his demand that such a thing should not be done, as it would interfere with the plans laid by the police. And so it would have done, but not in the manner that the bank officials were led to suppose. If the Pinkertons were to get into the case, Shinburn and I felt that it would be better to have none of the proceeds of the robbery where they could be traced to us. Therefore we discussed what would be the best disposition to make of it--it was still in my rooms, all except the cash, which had been banked. Finally, we agreed to go to Peekskill and bury the stuff in a safe place.
In pursuance of this plan we got large fruit-jars and filled them with bonds, etc., crowding them down as tightly as we could. We placed the jars in tin cans and sealed them up. With a part of these jars we went to Peekskill by train, hired a livery rig, and drove out about two miles northeast of the town. Here, in a wood, near an old mill, we buried the cans we had brought. The next day we took the rest of the cans to Staten Island and buried them in the woods then standing back of what is now known as St. George.
The weeks went by, and the Bank Ring succeeded in preventing the employment of the Pinkertons. One day I went down to Staten Island and drove up to where our plant was. Right over the spot where our cans lay buried was a tramp, stretched out, fast asleep. I left at once, but in great trepidation. The next day I returned and dug down to the treasure. It was all there, safe and sound. As everything seemed to be safe so far as the Pinkertons were concerned, I took up the cans, placed them in my wagon, and carried them back to town, where I put them in our box in the Safe Deposit Company’s vaults.
A few days after this a terrific storm swept over the lower Hudson valley, uprooting trees, throwing down buildings, and washing away hillsides. Shinburn and I feared that the rain might have washed bare our plant at Peekskill. Therefore we visited the plant and found it undisturbed; but we dug the cans up and took them back to New York, and put their contents in the deposit vault along with the rest. This burying of the treasure proved to have been an unnecessary precaution; but if the Pinkertons had been put to work on the job, this burial would no doubt have saved us from being caught with the goods on us.
However, we were never molested, nor was suspicion ever directed to Shinburn or myself on account of this robbery, great as it was. For weeks the press of the country teemed with items about it. Many and wild were the speculations as to who were the robbers, whence they had come and whither they had gone. But the truth has never been known until revealed in these pages--except to the robbers themselves and to the members of the police Bank Ring.
Furthermore, we sold all the government bonds without attracting the least attention to ourselves, though Detective George Elder was at one time pretty hot on the scent. However, his brother officers steered him off. Yes, he was even sent on several wild-goose chases after “suspected men” to keep him from interfering with us and our plans. The disposing of these bonds will make a good story. I may tell it later.
All of the non-negotiable paper that we took, amounting to eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars, turned up mysteriously one night on the steps of Captain Jourdan’s station-house, in Franklin Street, enclosed in the paying teller’s trunk, and was by the captain returned to the bank. Therefore the par value of the property that we actually realized on amounted to one million seven hundred thousand dollars. The government bonds, though, were worth at that time about one hundred and sixteen, if I remember rightly, which would make the real value of the entire property one million nine hundred and thirty-six thousand dollars. We did not realize this sum, however, as we had to sell the bonds at some discount.
The proceeds of the robbery were distributed as follows:--
Paid Insurance Agent Kohler $50,000 Paid our assistants, etc. 25,000 Paid Bank Clerk Taylor 275,000 Divided equally between Shinburn and myself 1,225,000 ---------- Total $1,575,000
The amount paid to the police was divided as follows:--
To James Irving, head of Detective Bureau $17,000 To John McCord, detective 17,000 To George Radford, detective 17,000 To James Kelso, detective 17,000 To Philip Farley, detective 17,000 To John Jourdan, Captain Sixth Precinct (afterward Superintendent) 17,000 To John McCord for Detective George Elder 17,000 To one other police detective 1,000 To Inspector Johnson 1,800 To John Browne 500 To Frank Houghtaling, Clerk Jefferson Market Police Court 10,000 -------- Total $132,300
In addition to the above amounts paid police and court officers, James Kelso, and Frank Houghtaling were each given a James Nardenne, Swiss movement, hunting-case watch and long chain, bought at Benedict Brothers’ for five hundred dollars apiece.
All moneys paid police and court officers, except John Jourdan’s share, I paid direct to John McCord as early as November 1. Jourdan’s rake-off was paid to him personally by me at his home in Prince Street on a Sunday evening three days before Shinburn sailed for Hamburg. At this meeting McCord was present, and it was arranged that McCord and Radford should be at the Hoboken pier to protect Shinburn from the Pinkertons.
As to the money paid to McCord for George Elder, the latter claimed he never received it. The five hundred dollars to Browne was paid after he had been bounced from the police force, and while he was runner for Mayor Oakey Hall. This money was not paid to Browne for services, but for the following reason: He came to me some time after the robbery, and, pleading poverty, said that he should have been “seen” in the Ocean Bank affair. I told him that I did not know what I had to do with that. He tried a bluff, but it didn’t work. Finally he came down, said he was in trouble over a girl, and that she would have him arrested if he did not give her five hundred dollars. Purely out of compassion--more for the woman than for him--I paid her the five hundred dollars and she released him. Later, Browne tried to hold me up again--this time for one thousand dollars. We had some rather hard words and he got nothing, and we have not been friendly since.
Many and varied were the episodes that grew out of this great robbery, owing to the great notoriety it gained throughout the country. Messrs. Linenthal and Co., wholesale tobacconists, had two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in government bonds on deposit with the bank as security in a lawsuit they had pending with the government. Linenthal and Co. sued the bank for the value of the bonds, claiming that the robbery was put up by some of the bank officials. To prove this claim they obtained a pardon for a convict in Sing Sing who claimed to be one of the burglars. He knew absolutely nothing about the robbery, and what, if any, testimony he gave I do not know. But he got his pardon.
At another time a crook named John Irving, being stranded in San Francisco and desirous of coming East, “confessed” that he was one of the burglars. The New York police were notified, and the Commissioners, not being in the “know,” ordered Captain Irving to go West after his namesake. Consequently he started, accompanied by Detective Dusenbury. About a month later I was at Suspension Bridge, on my way to attempt the robbery of a bank at Goodrich, Canada. A train from the West had just arrived, when I heard my name called. On looking up, I saw Captain Irving on the platform of a car of the east-bound train.
“Come over here, George,” he said. I walked across to the car and shook hands with him.
“Come inside,” said he. “I have something to show you.”
Together we went into the car, where we found a man handcuffed to Detective Dusenbury.
“This,” said Irving, pointing to the prisoner, “is, it is claimed, one of the Ocean Bank burglars.”
“You don’t mean it!” I replied. “How did you catch him?”
“Oh, he confessed, out in San Francisco, and the Commissioners sent us out after him. But by the time we got out there he had changed his mind and put up a fight. We have him, however; though, to tell you the truth,” said Irving, winking, “I don’t believe he did it. His story don’t sound right.”
And it didn’t sound right to the bank’s counsel, either; therefore the prisoner got his free ride to New York and was not tried for the Ocean Bank robbery. But, unfortunately for him, there was an old indictment against him, and on that he got five years in Sing Sing.
There were lots of just such fake stories based on the robbery.
Then the pretended selling of the stolen bonds was another scheme. Billy Matthews, my former gambler friend, in conjunction with one Jack Sudlow, worked this game for some time. Sudlow was an East-side boy who had gone to West Virginia and by some means become president of a bank there. He finally wrecked the bank, taking everything but the safe and a five-cent postage stamp. He overlooked the stamp and didn’t think of it till he had reached Baltimore--then it was too late to go back after it. The safe had been too heavy for him to carry.
This Jack Sudlow could lie like a bulletin board and make one believe that black was white. Well, he and Billy juggled many a good dollar out of the people’s pockets and gave in return a package supposed to contain stolen bonds, but which, in reality, held naught but an old newspaper or two. And it was not only “come-ons” that they beat, either. They took fifteen hundred dollars out of Elias, the original “sawdust man,” who was called the “king of swindlers.” And they “beat” Banker Sam A. Way, of Boston, out of twenty-one thousand dollars. The mode of beating Way was as follows: Way was president, and practically the owner, of the Bank of Metropolis, 36 State Street, Boston. He was widely known as a purchaser of stolen bonds if the price was right and no risk, and he was considered a very slick man. Sudlow went to him, and, showing a genuine one-thousand-dollar bond, said that he had twenty-five more that he would like to sell, at the same time stating that they were part of the Ocean Bank loot. Way bit, and finally purchased the twenty-six at thirty per cent discount on the market price, which was then one hundred and sixteen. Therefore the purchase price was twenty-one thousand one hundred and twelve dollars. The price having been agreed upon, Sudlow said:--
“Very well, I will leave this bond with you”--laying the genuine bond on Way’s desk--“and will bring the other twenty-five to-morrow. Please have the money all ready in large bills.”
The next afternoon, just before time for the bank to close, and when business there was the liveliest, Sudlow rushed in and said:--
“Here are the bonds, Mr. Way. Have you the money ready?” at the same time laying down a package marked “25--$1000--$25,000--U. S. Coupon Bonds 5/20 of 1863,” and fastened with wax seals bearing the imprint of the Park Bank of New York.
The successful pulling off of a swindle of this kind lies in the manner of the swindler. Sudlow had the right manner, and Way paid over the money without opening the package. Later he found that he had one good bond and a collection of newspapers.
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, 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 piled for myself earthly treasure outside of the Golden Rule, and they are accumulating colossal fortunes for themselves with the same persistent and bold disregard for that biblical admonition before them. However, I proceeded on somewhat different lines to gather in the shekels, though our incentives sprang from the same parent--desire for riches. Instead of employing expensive attorneys to keep me from getting into jail, I solicited the valuable assistance of the inner Bank Ring of the Police Department, whose services were expensive, I frankly admit, as was demonstrated in the percentage I paid the members of the Ring from the Ocean Bank haul. Nevertheless the Ring’s protection enabled me to remain in New York without being compelled to hide behind the cellar door, which is considerably more than some of my co-speculators of that period could say for themselves.
No doubt there are memories able to recall how Jay Gould and Russell Sage drove the Missouri Branch of the Union Pacific Railroad into insolvency by playing Wall Street tag with its stocks, and then through shrewd legal counsel secured for themselves the receivership of that valuable property. The same memories will also recall how Messrs. Gould and Sage so juggled the finances of that railway that the original stockholders were practically frozen out of their holdings, and how those stockholders rose in their righteous wrath and appealed through the criminal courts for justice and the recovery of their own. In that great crisis Jay Gould, the master wrecker of railroads, suddenly found himself in ill health, and, hastily provisioning his palatial steamer the _Atlanta_, sailed away on an extended ocean voyage, thus making himself safe against the pursuit of the officers of the law armed with warrants for his apprehension.
In closing this chapter I will add that the Ocean Bank is no more, though the building in which it was still remains intact. The various floors are now used as offices and small stores for tradesmen. The bank itself went to pieces in 1876, several years after my handiwork depleted its rich vault; but another class of crooks was the author of its ruin. The Tweed gang of politicians got in their greedy work, and when they were done, little remained to be divided among the honest people who patronized the bank. It was long a trite saying in Wall Street that the bank suffered much from the encroachment of the burglars, but that was but a mere trifle compared with the blow given it by the politicians.
The legend in great brownstone letters, “Ocean Bank,” may yet be seen over the main entrance to the building, a vivid reminder of the burglar craft and corrupt politicians of nearly twoscore years ago.