Daring Holdups

Perils That Confront a Railroad Express Messenger. How a Quick Witted Man Foiled a Band of Thieves -- The Man Who Slept on Duty. Since the railroad has penetrated the far west it has had to contend against the train robber, and the struggle between the bandits and the roads has been long and picturesque and one in which many lives have been sacrificed, and in that struggle, which is by no means ended, the express messenger has played an important part. The railroads have wisely adopted the policy in late years of concealing from the public the amount of their losses through robbery, as it was discovered that such information excited the cupidity of criminals and was soon followed by another robbery. On June 7, 1890, a Northern Pacific train was held up at Salem, N. D., by four masked men. The quick witted messenger, immediately upon hearing the shots that are preliminary to every robbery by a gang, locked everything of value in the safe, put out the lights and left the car. Finding the express car deserted and failing to discover the messenger, the bandits left it and turned their attention to the mail car. No wiser course could have been followed by the messenger solicitous for the safety of the money in his charge. Two robberies that resulted in the death of the men in charge of the express ears were that of a New York Central train near Rochester Feb. 21, 1892, by a lone highwayman, who broke into the car unaided, grabbed what plunder he could reach, then killed the messenger, and that at Lonely Hammock, Fla., on May 21, when four men held up a Jacksonville, Tampa and Key West train, murdered the messenger, wounded his assistant and plundered the car. The resourcefulness of the messenger on a St. Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha train which was robbed near Kesota Junction, Minn., on July 1, 1892, saved his company a large amount. Before the robbers broke into his car he gave the most valuable of the money packages to a friend who was riding with him and asked him to sit on them. On May 17, 1871, the express car running between Cincinnati and Pittsburg was robbed of $70,000. When the train arrived at Columbus, O., the messenger, George Bradley, was found on the couch in his car with a chloroform saturated sponge on bis breast. After he had been revived be said that upon leaving Cincinnati he had arranged his packages and gone to sleep as usual. He declared that he knew nothing of the robbery and was not aware that he had been chloroformed. His story was apparently sincere, and the fact that he had been pulled from the car unconscious seemed to prove bis sincerity. But the suspicious detective sent to investigate first consulted physicians to ascertain the effect of chloroform on a sleeping man. It was the opinion of the doctors that the first effect would be to wake the sleeper, and, as the messenger was clear on the point that he had not been conscious of the administration of the drug, the officer shadowed him. Working on another tack, it was found that the suspect had a brother, Theodore, who had once been a messenger, but who was at the time of the robbery out of work. This brother, it was learned, had been in Columbus on May 17. From that place he was followed to Chicago, where he was secretly married to a girl named Nellie Howland, who later became widely known as a variety actress. The two, accompanied by a brother of the girl, began to spend money very freely in celebrating the nuptials. On the following day it was learned that Bradley had purchased three tickets to a town in Canada. A detective was  detailed to the railroad station, and when the three came to take the train Bradley was arrested. ln the prisoner's overcoat pocket $7,000 was found, and stowed about his person was $9,000 more, and in a valise which he had left at his hotel $15,000 in large bills was discovered hidden between the false sides. Forced to a confession, Theodore Bradley attempted to shoulder the entire responsibility for the robbery, but he finally broke down and told of his brother's complicity in the crime, explaining that the messenger's share of the plunder was buried at Columbus. While the detectives in their wide experience are perfectly justified in taking a somewhat cynical and skeptical view of the probity of messengers, it happens now and then that they are entirely mistaken in their suspicions. A case like that of Ben Shipley arises at intervals to illustrate the fallibility of trained thief hunters. Shipley was a messenger on the Atchison and Nebraska railway early in the seventies, with a run from Atchison, Kan., to Lincoln, Neb. On his arrival at Lincoln one day it was found that $1,200 was missing from the safe. In the Atchison office the record were perfectly straight, there was no suspicion of the Lincoln officials, and the detectives soon settled upon the messenger as the thief. Shipley was discharged from the service, and "shadow" was placed on his trail. He tried to find employment, but the door of every office were closed against him. At last he became a common laborer In a railway grading gang. At the end of four years a second robbery occurred on Shipley's old run. In exactly the same way that the first had. A dragnet was put out this time by the officials and detectives, and in it was caught the company's agent at Falls City, Neb. When he was arraigned for the second robbery, he confessed to having committed the first. Old Dick Ivers was one of the first express messengers to run on the Missouri Pacific road after it began to be extended west of St. Louis. He had been a river expressman, running from St. Louis down to New Orleans, and no one would have said that he couldn't take care of himself and any amount of treasure placed in his care. But he did fail. His car was entered and robbed just after leaving Pleasant Hill, Mo., while he was peacefully sleeping. Now, the idea that Ivers could sleep through the robbery of his car seemed altogether preposterous to the express officials, and they sent out a detective from St. Louis to take him in charge, pending investigation. But that programme did not please Ivers, for he was as anxious as the company to find the clever robbers. He suspected that two men from Pleasant Hill were the thieves, and when the St. Louis detective arrived to take him in charge he reversed the order, taking the detective into camp and dragging him off to investigate the men whom Ivers suspected. After a chase of two weeks and more, meanwhile eluding and defying the officers sent out by the railroad officials, the old messenger found the men he hunted, forced a confession from them and handed them over to the law for punishment. And then old Dick Ivers went back to surrender to the company detectives. In what manner he was rewarded for his extraordinary zeal is not recorded, but it is certain that he did not lose his job. It was the custom of express companies for a long time when making deliveries of money packages in a city to send a single man on foot to do the work. This afforded a splendid opportunity for the clever robber. Early in the sixties in St. Louis a man named Miller was employed by a company to deliver in the city. One day a package arrived addressed to a supposititious lawyer in an office near the company's building. Miller was given this and a number of other packages to carry to their destinations. The "lawyer" had taken an office on the top floor of a very old building that held few tenants, and as Messenger Miller entered to deliver the package the door was slammed and locked, the messenger was knocked down and bound, and his packages were opened. The haul for the clever crooks was a good one, as that office was the first to be visited on Miller's round. Since then two men have been assigned to delivery routes.