At the time Meriam and I made our verbal agreement to go into business together, a Mr. Westcott, founder of the Westcott Express Company, was transferring baggage for the New York Central Railroad, but had no passenger service. We obtained from him the right to conduct a passenger transfer under his name, and at once started with eight horses and two Concord coaches, each of the latter bearing the inscription, “Westcott’s Transfer Coach.”
This venture proved so lucrative that, within a few months, Mr. Westcott decided to run it himself, and made us an offer for our stock, etc. As our agreement was verbal only, and for no specific term, we had perforce to sell to him.
In February, 1869, we bought from A. R. Matthews the stock and business of the Brevoort Stables, 114 Clinton Place, for a cash consideration of twenty thousand dollars, I furnishing the money; and the title was taken in my wife’s name. In fact, I gave it to her, though Meriam received one-half the profits, and it was always conducted under the name of “Meriam’s Brevoort Stables.”
Until the advent of the London cheap cabs this business netted over twelve thousand dollars per year. During my business career in New York I was known as George Miles, the latter being my middle name; but in the world of crooks I was known as Bliss and by other names. While in the livery business, I must add here, I had a sort of blind brokerage office in Broad Street, which was of service to me in more than one way.
The stable, as well as the hotel, was on land leased from the Sailors’ Snug Harbor Association, to which it belonged, and at the time we hired it Messrs. Clark and Wait, then proprietors of the Brevoort House, owned the lease of the stable also. We hired from them under a verbal agreement, and, during the fifteen years or more that we were their tenants we never had a single dispute, and our original agreement stood during the whole of that time.
When, on the death of his father, Charlie Wait came into control of the hotel, he got the aldermanic bee in his bonnet. In furtherance of his ambition, he made a political deal which embraced the letting of our stable to a certain politician. Consequently we were obliged to vacate and also to sell our stock at a great sacrifice. At this time Meriam was dead and I was finishing a twelve-year term of imprisonment in Vermont, where I had been since 1876, for the robbery of the Barre Bank. Consequently my wife was conducting the business with the aid of a manager, and she could not cope with Wait’s political aides.
When I had been sent to prison, I had been robbed of nearly every dollar I had by the New York police and was stone broke. Therefore this livery business was my wife’s sole dependence for her livelihood; and when deprived of it she was left in a bad way. On my release, in 1888, we were practically without a dollar—thanks to Charlie Wait. But he was no better off, having lost his whole fortune, including a one-third interest in the Windsor Hotel in Fifth Avenue.
Meanwhile, during our separation, Shinburn had not fared much better than I. He pulled off one good trick, got arrested for it, and escaped. This trick was the robbery of the Lehigh and Susquehanna Navigation Company at Whitehaven, Pennsylvania. A few days after our arrival in New York from the Steuben County jail, Shinburn went to Scranton. Here two sporting men of that city put him on to the safe in question, which on one night in each month contained a large sum of money with which to pay the employees of the company. Shinburn obtained wax impressions of the keys to the safe and had duplicates made.
On the night when the pay money was supposed to be in the office Shinburn entered the building and unlocked the safe. For some reason the expected amount of money was not there, the safe containing at the time only six thousand dollars. Shinburn decided not to take it, but to wait until the full amount was on hand. Therefore, replacing the six thousand dollars, he relocked the safe and left. The next month, on the day that the large sum of money was again supposed to be on hand, he returned, opened the safe, and found thirty thousand dollars. This he took, thus getting twenty-four thousand dollars as a reward for his patience.
He and one of the sporting men had driven over from Scranton in a rig that had been hired from a livery in that city. After looting the safe, they returned to Scranton by the same means, and would doubtless have escaped detection but for one of those mysterious happenings which seem to lie in the wake of the evil-doer to bring about his downfall.