The New York Tombs Inside and Out! / Scenes and Reminiscences Coming Down to the Present. A Story Stranger Than Fiction, with an Historic Account of America's Most Famous Prison.

by John Josiah Munro

Dr. F. W. Robertson was then superintendent of that institution, and was able after a few interviews to “size up” his boarder. It could not be denied that Shep was a young fellow of considerable ability, but all who knew him believed that he needed “watching.”

Dr. Robertson saw that he was an expert bookkeeper and could handle both the pen and typewriter with amazing agility. As he showed unusual brightness and precocity he was made assistant bookkeeper in the Clothing Department under Officer Weinberg. In the summer of 1901 Shep came to the conclusion that he had better abandon the seclusive privileges of Elmira and seek “fresh fields and pastures new” in some more congenial climate where the restraints of prison life were not so oppressive and where he would have room for the development and display of his mental powers.

When Shep found that he would be compelled to live in the Reformatory longer than he thought necessary, he very cautiously put out “feelers” to see if money could help him to freedom. As we read over the ramifications of his correspondence and follow the unraveling of his deeply laid schemes, we are forced to believe that some person or persons in the institution must have given him encouragement. From this time on, Shep, who possessed the luxury of a cool, calculating head, set himself to work by a well laid scheme to secure his liberty.

Shep must have had a fertile brain. Whether the information was sent him or not we do not know, at any rate he knew that there was a large corporation in Baltimore, known as the Shep Knitting Mill Company. As he had access to the Prison Printing Office he had letter heads struck off with the name and address of the mill. After this he wrote typewritten letters to the chairman of the Board of Trade, of Spencer, Mass., offering to build a knitting mill in that New England city, on which he proposed to spend $14,000, provided the citizens would give a site and a bonus of $2,500. The correspondence between Shep and Spencer Board of Trade was voluminous.

Shep had also written to a Philadelphia firm who promised to furnish the machinery and he was able to have an architect and a representative of the machinery firm meet in Spencer and look over the site for the new mill—all of which impressed the citizens of Spencer with the “realism” of the scheme. By December, 1901, the Spencer Board of Trade had raised the necessary bonus of $2,500 to send to Shep, as soon as the details were arranged, but alas, the whole project had no foundation whatever except in the fertile brain of Shep, the Elmira convict!

About this time Dr. Robertson, the superintendent, was making herculean efforts to stop the importation of tobacco into the Reformatory. Some person was smuggling the contraband, and the authorities set themselves to find out who it was. One of the first to be suspected was Officer Weinberg, who was instructor in the tailoring department. One evening after Weinberg had gone for the day, Dr. Robertson and some of his associates raided Weinberg’s rooms and captured some tobacco and many letters that came through the mails addressed to Shep. The correspondence between Shep and the Spencer Board of Trade showed clearly that for months this convict had been “dickering” to secure from them by fraud the sum of $2,500. During all this time Shep’s mail had been clandestinely brought into the Reformatory without the knowledge of the Superintendent and in violation of the rules. Officer Weinberg was at once suspected and a watch put upon his movements. Weinberg’s letter box in the Elmira post office was also watched by detectives, for mail addressed to Shep. On January 2nd, 1902, a letter reached Elmira by the morning mail addressed to George E. Shep, Esq., Elmira, N. Y. In the afternoon Officer Weinberg came to the post office, looked all around to see that no one was looking, secured the letter from the clerk, put it carefully in his inside pocket and departed. At that time, Dr. Robertson, the superintendent, had a detective in the post office concealed from public view, who saw all of Weinberg’s movements from the time he came into the office till he carried the letter away. That afternoon he reported the matter to Dr. Robertson, who awaited further developments.

Next morning at exactly six o’clock Officer Weinberg reported at the Reformatory, as was his usual custom, signed the register, and then went to breakfast. Afterwards Weinberg was called into the front office, where he was closeted with Dr. Robertson and several of the officers for two hours; he was asked if he had been in the habit of carrying tobacco and mail matter into the Reformatory against the rules, all of which he denied. Then he was asked to surrender the letter he had received the day before in the Elmira post office addressed to Shep, which had the postmark of Spencer, Mass., and which he had then in his pocket. Weinberg finally broke down and surrendered the letter. This letter was from the chairman of the Board of Trade of Spencer, Mass., asking for final instructions as to how the bonus money should be sent to Shep and closing the bargain for the bogus knitting mill.

While Weinberg was undergoing a rigid examination at the Reformatory the police searched his rooms in Elmira and found more letters and a suit of clothes belonging to the Reformatory. He was then placed under arrest charged with petit larceny. Further investigation revealed the fact that no less than two hundred letters for Shep had been brought into the Reformatory in the course of six months. Some of the letters showed that Shep had secured a firm of architects in Worcester, Massachusetts, to prepare plans for the new $14,000 building and that Weinberg was to be general manager. Arrangements were also made with a Machine Company, of Philadelphia, to furnish the plant with several thousand dollars worth of new machinery.

About the same time a long article appeared in the Spencer Herald, on the new Shep Knitting Mills, so soon to be operated in that city, and congratulating the city fathers on the success of their negotiations, and promising that the city would build new sewers and some of their enterprising citizens would erect a row of houses and possibly a street for the mill hands.

After several weeks of investigation the authorities came to the conclusion that all that convict Shep wanted was the money to bribe some of the Reformatory guards so as to make good his escape. In working up his scheme, Shep showed himself to be an expert forger, as he involved several other persons in his plans by forging their names to his papers, although they denied all knowledge of it. Great credit is due to Dr. Robertson, who nipped the scheme just in the nick of time and before the Spencer people had paid over the money to the noted crook.