TALL JIM MOVES FROM COLUMBUS PRISON
A letter came to me in the summer of 1868, two years after the Cadiz,
Ohio, bank robbery. It was in June, and upon opening it, with no little
curiosity, it proved to be from Mrs. Hammon, a sister of Tall Jim. As
will be remembered, Jim was sent to the prison at Columbus.
“If possible, come on to Ohio at once,” the letter said, among other
things, “for Jim has reason to think he has a plan to free himself,
George Wilson, and Big Bill. As for Jack Utley, he’ll be left to his
fate.”
“Well, I think so too,” was my mental comment as to Utley.
Having full confidence in the genuineness of the letter, I made a
hurried trip to Columbus and conferred with Mrs. Hammon. The gist of
the whole thing was that Tall Jim had found what we called a “right”
guard; that is, a prison official who is willing to betray his trust,
sell his honor, or do anything in that line provided there’s money
enough in it. The guard who promised to do the job said it would cost
twelve hundred dollars; that is, he could arrange matters in the
tier where Jim’s cell was so that escape to the roof of the hospital
would be easy. At that point, outside assistance would be available.
Something was said about getting Jack Utley out too, provided all hands
were agreed, but I flatly declared that I would not have anything to do
with the plot if Utley was to benefit by it. His mean, sneaking ways
had poisoned my mind against him for all time. I would not have allowed
his treatment of me in the Ohio expedition to stand in the way of his
freedom, but his later betrayal of the lads who trusted him was too
much for me to overlook. I was firm in this determination, declaring
that he must be left in prison, to get out the best way he could--which
was no more than a man of his caliber deserved. I had often heard, when
a lad, the expression, “Be a Man or a Monkey or a Long-tailed Rat,”
and I had placed Utley in the rodent class, with a bright chance of
carrying off all the honors.
“This ‘right’ guard will fix the cells of Jim and the boys on any night
agreeable to us,” said Mrs. Hammon, “and we can help them from the
hospital roof. After that it will be plain sailing.”
The plan seemed to be feasible enough, after I had been thoroughly
informed of it, and I told her so. Also I assured her that I’d go
to New York and with all possible haste put it in execution. I was
determined to do what I could in the way of paying for and working out
any plan that would get Jim out.
In a few days I was in Columbus again, with Frank, a trusted
lieutenant, plenty of money, and a lot of paraphernalia, including a
stout rope ladder. Sulphur Springs, a town about thirty miles away, was
made the base of operations, and there I hired a team for the escape
and perfected arrangements. The following Saturday night was agreed
upon as the earliest hour we could undertake the job. That night was
the most favorable one of the week, for on Sunday morning prison life
was apt to be more sluggish than at any other time. Friday evening I
met the “right” guard at Mrs. Hammon’s, and we discussed his part of
the plot from every standpoint, coming to what seemed to be a perfect
understanding. If he kept his agreement, I couldn’t see how there’d be
a failure. Mrs. Hammon thought so too. Would the man be faithful in the
deal? That was the question. I took Mrs. Hammon aside and questioned
her about the guard. She said there’d be no mistake in trusting him.
At this I handed him twelve hundred dollars, and he left, promising
to perform every detail of his part in the plan, by the clock. How I
seemed to distrust him! However, I hadn’t anything near tangible upon
which to base my suspicion, so I said no more about it. I had been
and was associating with many of the best crooks of the country, and
I flattered myself that I knew a “square” one the moment I laid eyes
on him. But the best of us are sometimes mistaken. However, I had paid
him the price, and we must trust to luck. It was a situation that
brought to mind the story of the old farmer whose horse was running
away downhill. His wife, Sally, was on the seat beside him. “Trust in
the good Lord, Joshua!” she screamed; and the farmer, tugging away at
the reins, cried out: “Yes, Sal, we’ll trust in Him till the breechin’
breaks, an’ then the Lord knows we’ll jump!”
The following afternoon Frank and I drove from Sulphur Springs to
Columbus with a spanking double team for the “get-away.” At nine
o’clock that night I was to meet the guard and get the final word,
and about midnight the job was to be put through. He was waiting for
me, but with much concern and profuse apologies said that the plan
could not work that night because a guard upon whom he depended for
assistance had been suddenly taken ill and was not on duty. He said,
further, that the best that could be done, under the circumstances, was
to wait until Wednesday night of the following week.
I left him, very much disgruntled and suspicious, with a promise to
meet him on Monday night, when the details of the next attempt would
be discussed. I was not at all surprised when he did not put in an
appearance then, and I was not much astonished, the following day, when
I learned he’d drawn his salary from the state, resigned his position,
and flown to parts unknown. We had been well gold-bricked. Swallowing
the situation with as much grace as I could, I gathered up my tools,
and Frank and I went back to New York, considerably wiser. Only the man
who wears the prison stripes can fully appreciate the feelings of the
lads when they learned of the “right” guard’s disappearance with the
twelve-hundred-dollar bribe. I wondered what would happen to him if Big
Bill ever crossed his path. Mrs. Hammon was given to understand that
any reasonable promise of money made in the future I would attempt to
fulfil, but not a cent would be paid until the lads were delivered on
the outside of the prison walls.
I heard no more of Tall Jim for twelve months, then another message
came, summoning me to Columbus; also the information that Charlie, the
son of Contractor Osborn, who did carting for the prison, had been
induced by Jim to assist in a plot to deliver him into friendly hands
on the outside of the walls.
“Charlie is of standard make,” wrote Jim’s sister, enthusiastically;
“and you can depend upon it he’ll deliver the goods or there’ll be no
coin.”
This, Mrs. Hammon said to me in the most positive vein, upon my arrival
in Columbus. After the first experience I was somewhat sceptical,
but I ventured the hope that the young man would do all that was
expected of him, and more. From the description of him, it seemed to
me he was worth a trial. Jim had conceived a plan by which he could
be put on the outside of the walls, provided the right sort of a deal
could be made with any one of the contractors who carted goods in
or out of the prison. It was a ticklish undertaking, and, so far as
reaching any of the contractors was concerned, a complete failure.
However, through the exercise of some ingenuity, Jim ascertained that
the son of Contractor Osborn was addicted to wild ways and seldom had
money enough to maintain the pace. Jim put out a “feeler,” and young
Osborn responded--responded like the needle to the magnet. Presently
he bargained to deliver Jim on the outside of the prison for two
hundred dollars spot cash, and the balance to be paid according to
any agreement between the interested parties after the success of the
undertaking.
I met Osborn, and we discussed the plan. It included the manipulation
of a “right” driver of one of his father’s teams, and as a teamster
was expected to resign in a few days, it was my duty to furnish the
new one to fill the vacancy. Making a flying trip to New York, I
perfected arrangements for the second time, and, returning, brought
my faithful Frank with me. He took lodgings at a working-man’s hotel,
disguised to fit the part, while I went to the Neil House. The day
after the teamster resigned Frank applied for the place, but was told
to return the following day, which he did, only to find another man had
been hired. Now, young Osborn had no control over the hiring of men
in his father’s employ, and had he, I doubt that it would have been
wise for him to assume the responsibility for a man who might later
be suspected of complicity in the escape of a convict. But Osborn was
made of the sort of material we wanted in this emergency; indeed, was
very much riper for the undertaking than I imagined he would be. We
were discussing what would be done next, when he suddenly declared
his determination to personally carry out his agreement and without a
“right” driver.
Accordingly, two days later, at two o’clock in the afternoon, my man
Frank was waiting with a fine pair of bays and a smooth-running buggy,
in a field not far from the rear of the prison wall and close by the
bank of the Scioto River. He was well out of the view of any one on
the walls, but when I came up at the rear of one of the storehouses of
the prison, where many of the supplies were kept, I could plainly see
him, and I waved the signal that all was progressing favorably. It was
the work of some of the teamsters in the employ of Contractor Osborn
to haul supplies and do other kinds of carting between the storehouses
and the prison. Charlie Osborn had planned to deliver a certain package
from the prison yard to a platform of one of the storehouses. This
done, his part of the bargain would be finished. I had not been long in
my hiding-place when I saw a team come hurriedly up to the platform.
Young Osborn, who was along, was seen to roll a barrel from the wagon
to the platform, and then to turn and direct the driver to hasten to
the prison again after another load.
No sooner had the teamster disappeared than Osborn cut the hoops away
from the barrel with a hatchet at hand for the purpose, and as the
staves fell apart with a clatter, I saw Tall Jim, his face looking like
death and gasping for breath, stagger into a standing posture, clothed
in the convict stripes.
It was as though Osborn had been a magician, and with one sweep of his
wand had smote a barrel and transformed it into a human being.
This done, Osborn was ready to take two crisp one-hundred-dollar bills
from me and vanish without a word. Then I turned to Tall Jim. In the
quickest possible time I had him in overalls and a linen duster which I
had brought along, and was half carrying him to the waiting carriage.
He couldn’t have walked there unassisted, it requiring all my strength
to support him, he was so nearly prostrated by his journey in the
barrel. He had been in it for nearly an hour, I afterward learned. I am
satisfied that we would have had a dead man in the barrel had it been
delivered one minute later.
In packing him, he had been so wedged in that breathing was nearly
impossible. He was in the most intense pain during his transit from the
prison yard to the storehouse. I wondered that he lived. But there was
no time for delay--five minutes after his release we were humming away
from the scene as fast as fleet-footed horses would carry us, and no
stop was made till we had put two miles between us and the prison. Then
we halted long enough to give Jim a stimulant and clothe him in a suit
I had provided to take the place of the convict garb, which we threw
in a clump of bushes. Off we went again, in the direction of Delaware,
where we intended to board a train for New York. At times I was worried
more than I cared to confess over Jim’s condition. It would not have
surprised me had he died on our hands. When we had traversed eight
miles, he began to show signs of improvement, and when presently he
began to evince some interest in his surroundings, I felt more hopeful;
and finally, when he asked where we were bound, I knew that he was all
right.
“We’re hustling for Delaware,” I explained to him, “as fast as hoofs
will take us there.”
“Now, George, you’re making a bull of it,” he whimpered, like a
petulant sick child; “that’s not right.”
I insisted that we were doing just what we ought to do, but he
persisted in telling me a plan he’d mapped out in his cell, which would
take us some forty miles back in the country, and in the very worst
direction we could possibly go. Not unlike most men in prison, he was
tiptop in building air-castles. He kept arguing until he was about
ready to shed tears of disappointment. But I wouldn’t give in an inch.
At last I could stand his whining no longer and determined to show my
authority. It required just thirty seconds to squelch him and his pet
scheme. He never again talked about it.
“See here, Jim,” I said, in a voice that he knew had a business ring in
it; “I didn’t come away out here in Ohio to make a blind ‘get-away,’
so there’s two things for you to do--lay aside your advice, or--” and
I produced a secret service shield, a United States warrant for John
Doe or Richard Roe, and a glistening pair of handcuffs. Amazed at the
completeness of my scheme to make certain his escape, Jim “took a
tumble to himself,” as the language of the crook has it, and subsided.
When we reached Delaware, the good citizens there who took any notice
of us at all, saw, as they believed, a bona-fide officer of the law,
stoutly handcuffed to a desperate criminal. We left the team with a
liveryman there and money to pay all the bills for its use. He agreed
to return it to Columbus, and we, boarding a train, in due time arrived
in New York without mishap. Tall Jim was free.
Four days later, to our astonishment, Charlie Osborn appeared in New
York, with the expressed determination to remain. He was a good sort
of a fellow, faithful and greatly to be depended upon, so I gave him a
bookkeeping job in the Brevoort Stables, where he remained until his
health, which was not of the best when I first saw him, failed, and he
had to seek another and more favorable climate. In relating this story
of Jim’s escape, I must not fail to say that I have not given Charlie
Osborn’s real name. I did not think it just to him, and again, why
should I harrow the feelings of his father, who was a most esteemed
citizen of Columbus.
Charlie had great nerve. Not only did he cast Tall Jim from the
prison’s interior, but he actually awaited Jim’s coming to the
storeroom, packed him in the barrel, put the head in the latter, and
personally ordered the teamster to do the loading. Tall Jim easily
found an excuse for leaving the shop where he was employed on state
contracts.
We saw no possible chance of obtaining the freedom of George Wilson and
Big Bill, so they served out their sentences. As for Jack Utley, his
father had him pardoned. Two years after Jim escaped, he was rearrested
in one of my enterprises and sent to a Pennsylvania prison. After
serving his time there, he was taken back to Columbus to finish his
unexpired term, but luckily was soon pardoned by Governor Foster.
I well remember how Tall Jim looked, though many years have passed
since I set eyes on him. He was of medium height, being a trifle
under six feet; of sandy complexion, blue eyes, and usually wore a
well-trimmed beard. His pleasing address and ready flow of language
made him wonderfully useful in our work of canvassing for lootable
banks in Ohio. The only son of wealthy parents in New York, he had been
given a thorough business training; but he early developed expensive
habits and fast companions, the outcome of which was a twenty-year
sentence in Clinton prison, New York. Five years later his father
secured his pardon from Governor Fenton, and obtained him a position
with Thompson & Company, at Broadway and Wall Street, New York, as a
solicitor for their _Bank-note Reporter_, a publication devoted to
the suppression of counterfeit money. This, with a magnifying glass,
which he sold on the representation that it was the best detector of
the counterfeiter’s art ever devised, was bringing him in plenty of
money, and he was on a fair road to financial success, when he met
George Wilson, whose acquaintance he’d made in Clinton prison. His good
father’s advice went to the winds, and back he fell into the old ways.
Finally, he entered into a partnership with Wilson, Mark Shinburn, and
Big Bill. They robbed a bank near Rochester, New York, which netted
them three thousand dollars. Not long after this I met Billy Matthews
and was introduced to Wilson, Tall Jim, and the other members of the
Ohio bank looting enterprise.