From Boniface to Bank Burglar; Or, The Price of Persecution / How a Successful Business Man, Through the Miscarriage of Justice, Became a Notorious Bank Looter

by George M. White

I have already said that lax business methods, as practised at the Ocean Bank in New York City, and the expensive habits of John Taylor, one of the bank’s trusted clerks, were the prime factors in making my plan to loot the vault an assured success. There is no doubt of this, therefore I would call especial attention to that chapter. That I may more deeply impress the fact upon the minds of those I would advise, permit me to mention yet another marked laxness in providing protection for bank funds, and that is the selection of the numbers used on combination locks.

Experience taught me to observe the custom of banks, as to the manner in which the combination numbers were used, and I soon found it to be the prevailing rule among cashiers to use figures easily divisible. For example, a train of numbers selected would be four, sixteen, and thirty-two, or twelve, twenty-four, and thirty-six. Such trains should be avoided if first-class protection against robbery is desired. I will give a sufficient reason for thus advising my friends. In a certain bank robbery, the identity of which I purpose not to disclose at present, I was reasonably sure that I possessed the first number of the train used on the vault-door lock. The number was twelve. I tried it at the first opportunity with twenty-four and thirty-six, and in five minutes was inside the vault. Finding that the numbers easily divisible seemed to be the custom of the bank, I tried four, sixteen, and thirty-two on the inside money chest. The result was not at all astonishing to me, but the officials were undoubtedly panic-stricken, the next day, when they learned that a large amount of ready cash had been carried away. No holes were drilled, and no explosive was used. Therefore I would advise more care in the selection of combination numbers. Do not think it a task to change the combination often.

The old Louis Lillie combination locks, where the spindle dial could be unscrewed, and a few other makes of the present day, most of them antiquated, could be successfully manipulated. In fact, these locks were what I termed a “dead walk-over.” I must assert, however, that if it is necessary to work out a properly arranged, first-class, three or four tumbler combination lock, it can be safely said that it is, in nearly every case, a physical impossibility to master such a lock in forty-eight or even seventy-two hours.

In using combination locks, it is best to change the numbers frequently, especially when a clerk is about to leave the bank’s employ. Of course what I am speaking of now, more particularly, has to do with small banks in the villages and small cities, where clerks are loaded with greater responsibility than are those in the institutions of large cities. 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. Had the combination numbers been changed at his leave-taking, he couldn’t have opened the safe, and perhaps, having failed the first time, he wouldn’t have been tempted again. It doesn’t pay to be lax in business methods.

I was introduced to a “right” watchman in Boston once upon a time, and having in view the looting of the bank in his charge, wanted the vault examined. The outer door of the vault was of wood and was next to the steel one. The watchman reported to me the next day what I wanted and more. The president had asked him if he’d opened the wooden door. He promptly denied it. But the president knew the door had been unlocked and opened and, not suspecting the watchman, believed that burglars, in some manner, had been tampering with the vault. How he knew it was this: Every evening before leaving the bank, the president closed the wooden door and put a certain kind of paste on one of the hinges. The morning after the watchman opened the door, the paste was found scraped back by the turning of the hinge. It was a faithful witness to the fact. Had the watchman admitted that he’d heard suspicious sounds which led him to open the door, the president would have thought no more about it undoubtedly. As it was, the watchfulness of that bank official spoiled my plans. It was a simple obstacle in my way, but it was effective in preserving the bank’s funds.

Jimmy Hope, a notorious bank burglar, got into a certain bank in Bleecker Street in New York City, and, taking off the dial of the vault lock, drilled a hole through the door to strike the steel dog in the lock. The object was to get at the dog and break it. Bad aim resulted, and the dog was missed. Too much time had been consumed to drill another hole, and putty was used to fill up the useless one. For months the tampering was undiscovered, not to mention the marks on the dial plate caused by the unscrewing of the dial. Not to have discovered these plain evidences of tampering seemed to me the rankest sort of neglect. The bank was afterward robbed.

I will mention the American Hotel in Hartford, Connecticut, as the scene of another robbery which emphasizes what I’ve already said as to carelessness. The hotel changed hands some thirty years ago, and one of the retiring partners retained a key to the office safe. Not having the “nerve” of the “honest” crook to do the work himself, he confided in a “putter up” of crooked jobs, a native of Wayne County, Pennsylvania. Now this “putter up”—though the telling may perhaps call forth a doubt as to the veracity of this tale—was a justice of the peace. His brother was a well-to-do, respectable physician. The justice of the peace was given the key by the ex-hotel man, and it was passed along to a man with whom I had been acquainted many years.

The next move to win was when a pair of expert safe burglars appeared at the American Hotel in the guise of two extremely busy business men from New York. They quite captured the good will of that Yankee hostelry. When they left instructions at the desk to be awakened in time for a two o’clock train the following morning, the porter, the only employee on duty at that hour, knew he’d lose his situation if the travellers were allowed to oversleep. He wasn’t dilatory, and the “guests” were up betimes. While one of them kept the porter busy searching for a mythical piece of baggage, the other, with the key, cleaned out the safe and locked it again. Presently the guests were bound toward New York. Meanwhile the obliging porter hugged a generous tip for his faithfulness, and when he slid off into a dream that seemed to occupy the rest of his watch, he thought himself a millionaire. His awakening, however, was sad. The haul was more than the crooks had anticipated, and they were well paid for the journey. It was long a mystery to the hotel people how the money vanished from the safe. The moral is: “Keep tabs on the safe keys when partnerships are dissolved.”

The laxity of bankers in conducting their business affairs was ever a mystery to me. I have given the subject much thought since renouncing a criminal career, and have arrived at this conclusion: That a criminal has a much better opportunity to judge whether or not the success of his unlawful projects came through the carelessness of others, than has the man who leads a life within the pale of the law. I must say that a great deal of the success which came to me was the outcome of gross carelessness on the part of bank cashiers, tellers, clerks, and watchmen. Therefore I would urge upon those in charge of public funds to look well after the little things, in the way of providing protection.

Kindly do not think it my purpose to coin words or phrases for the use or misuse of posterity, but I would, in all sincerity, warn the bankers of the land against a microbe which I will call “callousitis.” Keep it out of your business. 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. As the laborer’s palms become callous through constant contact with rough surfaces, so the brain of a bank employee arrives at a stage of indifference through his daily mental contact with millions of dollars. The wood-chopper’s hands, once blistered with the friction of the axe helve, at last became hardened to the work and there was no more tenderness. Thereafter he wielded the axe industriously, without pain to his hands. The bank employee’s brain was awed at the first handling of a million dollars, but that sensation gave place to indifference, when in time he came to handle ten times a million dollars. And so he became, eventually, a victim of “callousitis.” Thus afflicted, the victim may or may not be aware of it, but in the majority of cases he is, and such a victim is very prone to be lax in business affairs, and such laxity eventually leads to disaster when thieves abound.