Twenty Years a Detective in the Wickedest City in the World by Clifton R. (Clifton Rodman) Wooldridge

Author:Clifton R. (Clifton Rodman) Wooldridge [Wooldridge, Clifton R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Google: yZSqcQAACAAJ
Publisher: Chicago Publishing Company
Published: 1908-01-15T05:44:01+00:00

Circus Day Brings a Harvest.

Many sneak robberies were formerly committed in medium-sized towns on circus days, while most of the employes were at windows or doors watching the circus parade. This offered "sneak" thieves the opportunity to enter the building by some unguarded door or window, or having, prior to the parade, concealed themselves in the bank or store, to commit the robbery while the parade is passing, virtually behind the backs of the employes.

A favorite scheme, especially in savings banks, is for one thief to attract the attention of a customer who is counting money, to have a bill purposely dropped in front of him on the floor by the thief and, while he stoops down to pick it up, believing it part of his money, another thief steals the then unprotected money he, the customer, was counting. Often professional "sneak" thieves have posed as bank clerks or porters, wearing office coats or porter's uniforms and, when the opportunity presents itself, committed robberies of considerable magnitude.

Some of the old-time "sneaks" used specially made steel instruments of various shapes to move packages of money from one section of the teller's cage to a point nearer the teller's window, so that it could be more readily extracted. This practice, while the utmost caution is necessary to avoid suspicion, has been quite successful.

At times thieves have used large satchels or dress-suit cases to stand upon and, with a long wire hook, extracted money by reaching over the wire screen surrounding a paying teller's cage.

A method sometimes used to commit money drawer or "till" robberies in stores is to select some innocent-appearing storekeeper, usually a foreigner, whom one of the thieves wearing a silk hat would approach, informing him that they had just made a wager that the hat would not hold more than a gallon of molasses, and requesting that the storekeeper measure a gallon of molasses into the hat at their expense, to decide the wager.

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