crime: January 2008 Archives

York Chief of Detectives Charles S. White celebrated Lincoln’s Birthday a hundred years ago by jailing a jewel thief named Harry St. Clair. White went to Baltimore to pick up the 16-year-old criminal, who had been arrested there.

The Gazette reports that St. Clair was charged with:

An Earlier View of Market and Beaver Streets by William Wagner with National House on Left.

I recently wrote about a rowdy York citizen swinging a Civil War cavalry sword around a local cigar store in 1877.

Click here to read about the sword incident.

That York Gazette article referred to even more excitement the previous week in the same neighborhood at Market and Beaver Streets.

I recently wrote about a Confederate sword that a farmer plowed up near Hanover in 1882, nearly 20 years after it had fallen in a skirmish there.

Click here to read about sword on Forney farm.

There were probably a lot of swords around York County in the years after the Civil War, brought home as souvenirs of that dreadful conflict.

Drinking and weapons of any kind shouldn’t go together, as we can see in the following article from the October 30, 1877 Gazette. (The anonymous reporter had a rather droll sense of humor--a 19th century Mike Argento?)

We often hear about new schemes the unscrupulous come up with to part the unwary from their cash. The York Daily newspaper reported an elaborate one of 100 years ago.

The January 31, 1908 article reads: “CHIEF WHITE ARRESTS FAKE BIOGRAPHY MAN.
R. N. Crawley, of Philadelphia, who came to York several months ago, representing that he was about to publish a book of biographies of prominent professional and business men, was arrested yesterday afternoon by Chief of Detectives Charles S. White on charges of false pretence.”

This map, from the 1876 Pomeroy, Whitman Atlas of York County shows the location of the Lutheran Burial Ground.

Sounds like familiar headlines from today’s papers, doesn’t it? Unfortunately stealing for the salvage value is nothing new. In fact, the following article from December 29, 1874 Gazette reports that the York County Courthouse was the victim: