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User:Ww2censor/Mail robbery

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1881 painting of French Mail coach at Nice by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

A Mail robbery is the robbery of mail usually when it is in the possession, custody, or control, of the delivering authority, which in most countries is the postal operator. Less well known are mail robberies of mail already delivered but this is possible where delivery letter boxes, or community mailbox clusters, are located outside the house, or at the property line or in the locality, where they are easily accessed such as those in the United States, Canada, France and Australia.[1]

The objective is to acquire items of value. In the mail service this most oftens means the registered mail that can contain, cash, cheques, jewellery, precious stones, gold and silver, other negotiable instruments or luxury goods. Mail robberies have, for example, taken place from; mail coaches, trains, postal carriers, post offices, mail vans and pillar boxes.[2][3]

History

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Painting showing the Edinburgh and London Royal Mail mail coach decorated in the black and scarlet Post Office livery in 1838. The guard can be seen standing at the rear.

United Kingdom

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One of the earlieest mentions of a mail robbery, when some letters were intercepted near Worcester was in 1577.[4] In 1647 correspondence from Edward Popham were stolen from the post boy at Haywards Heath.[5]

During the late eighteenth century in the Kingdom of Great Britain attacks on postboys were so common the Post Office advised customers sending banknotes "to cut all such Notes and Draughts in Half in the following Form, to send them at two different Times, and to wait for the return of the Post, till the receipt of one Half is acknowledged before the other is sent."[6]

Post boys travelled slowly, making them easy target for highwaymen,[6] taking forty-eight hours to transport a letter from Bath to London. In 1782 John Palmer, an owner of theatres in Bath & Bristol, suggested his plan for the night mail coach. The aim was to carry passengers and mail at faster speeds than the passenger service by day over the same route. Armed guards would provide protection and speed gained from lightweight coaches, more reliable post house services and experienced contractors providing fresh horses. Palmer himself travelled around the country timing routes and checking distances. On 29th July 1784 the Bath Chronicle stated that "the letters for London or for any place between or beyond to be put into the Bath Post Office every evening before 6 o'clock, and into the Bristol Post Office before 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and they will be delivered in London the next day".

 
1794 post office notice of reward concerning the robbery of the mail between Chester and Liverpool

Few believed this possible but the 'first night' run of 2 August 1784 proved to be a complete success. During 1785 Palmer travelled 5,000 miles in four months and eleven mail coach routes were soon established. SG1258 shows the original Bath Mail coach. Mail coaches quickly gained a reputation for reliability & punctuality. As carriers of the Royal Mail they took precedence over other forms of transport.

The Patent Mail coach designed by John Besant had one very important innovation over the standard coaches of the time, a safety axle box. The standard method of fitting a wheel was with a linch pin which, even with regular greasing, would often shear off without warning. The safety axle was designed so that a metal plate prevented the wheel from coming off, while a groove on the axle arm allowed oil to trickle down on the bearing and metal plate.

Coaches were owned by the Post Office and rented out to contractors who provided coachmen & fresh teams of horses along the route. The Mail Guard, unlike the coachman, was employed by the Post Office and was responsible for the safe keeping of the mail. He was issued with a blunderbuss, a brace of pistols and a military style red coat and cockaded hat. The mail was the Guard's first responsibility and after some accidents, or because of flood or snow, he would carry the mail on foot.

Above is from this web page 1984: Bicentenary of the First Mail Coach Run, Bath and Bristol to London GUILD OF MODEL WHEELWRIGHTS Post and Mail Coaches[dead link]

Ireland

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While Ireland had its own independent post office from 1784 until 1831, a collection of reward notices covering the period from 1820 until 1870, documents a wide variety of robberies from mail coaches and mail cars to post offices and even post boxes, but post-boys seem to have been a popular target to be robbed. Rewards offered were generally between £20 and £100.[7]

Initially there was one mail coach guard but due to the frequent attacks a second and even a third guard were assigned on some night stages. Coaches were even accompanied by a military guard, such as the Belfast coach travelling the lonely and mountainous road between Newry and Drogheda, that could be accompanied by six dragoons.[8]: 69–70  The Irish mail coaches were attacked more frequently than those in England or Scotland.[8]: 76 

 
Envelope found open in recovered mail raided during the Anglo-Irish War in 1921 and resealed with notation.

A mail bag was stolen from a mail coach on Christmas Eve 1799 near Ravensdale, County Louth, and the robbers vanished. The repercussion was that a dozen poor cottagers who lived close by were sent to jail but released after a few days. On 19 January 1803 when the Dublin to Cork mail coach was robbed near Cashel, the guard used up all his ammunition and was wounded but secured the mail bag even though the private parcels were stolen.[8]: 69–70  A robbery in which the guard was killed in 1812 happened at Cappagh Hall in County Kildare but it was not until 1817 that the accused was put on trial though acquitted.[9][8]: 69–70 

Between 1919 and 1923, during the Anglo Irish War and Irish Civil War, mail trains and post offices were robbed by members of the Irish Republican Army. Military mail was specially targeted for its intelligence and some mail was marked as having been censored before being recovered or returned.[10][11] In addition to post offices, postmen were also robbed of their mail.[12] It's recorded that in just four weeks of Spring 1922 there were 331 post office robberies alone.[13]

United States of America

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Mail recovered from a Pony Express mail robbery in 1860

In 1799 the Congress of the United States passed a law authorizing the death penalty for a second offence of mail robbery or if the carrier was wounded or his life put in jeopary.[14]

Billy the Kid was interviewed by post office inspectors about a mail robbery in Santa Fe in 1881.[15]

The last known stagecoach robbery was solved in 1916 when the perpetrators were caught five days after the event by the United States Postal Inspection Service.[15]

In the 1920s robberies of mail trains had increased to a level of that more than $6.3 million had been stolen in three dozen incidents that included all forms of mail transportation.[16]

Thieves now also target residential letter boxes and post office post boxes, removing all the just delivered mail.[17] As recently as September 2017, a mail carrier in Kansas was convicted of stealing gift cards, cash and prepaid debit cards he was entrusted to deliver and sentenced to six months in prison.[18] Under US Code Title 18, which covers a wide range of mail theft a person can receive a fine and be sentenced up to five year in prison.[19]

Types of robbery

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Post-boys to mail carriers

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Post-boys

Mail coach robberies

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United States Overland Mail stagecoach being attacked by American Indians c1865

Despite the death penalty in the UK stage coach (from 1784 Mail coach) robberies by highwaymen were common. For example, in 1722 two were executed for robbing the Bristol mail.[20]

The newspaper account of a robbery, during the early 1800s, were of the Stirling–Edinburgh mail coach reports that three men took £10,000 cash while it was stopped at Kirkliston though one of the robbers was caught.[21]

During the American gold rush of the 1850s and 1860s, Wells Fargo was carrying both mail and gold in the strongboxes on their mail coaches. Many holdups took place by individual robbers and entire gangs. The Butterfield Overland Mail route was eventually taken over by Wells Fargo who build up their own detective and police force to combat robbery of their mail coaches. Black Bart a notorious mail coach robber is documented[22] as having robbed at least twenty-six Wells Fargo stage coaches from which he is alleged to have also stolen the mail. A reward of $800 was offered on a poster for just two robberies in 1877 and 1878[23] though he robbed more. He was tracked down by James B. Hume, Wells Fargo's chief detective who brought the plague of robberies under control, and convicted of one robbery to which he admitted for which he was sentenced to six years in San Quentin prison that started on November 21, 1883. Black Bart was released in January 1888.[24]

Mail train robberies

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Robberies from trains also began early and one such example was on the Bristol and Exeter Railway in 1849.[25]

In the United States the period immediately following the First World War witnessed a large number of mail robberies. Eventually, the frequency of these thefts caused the war department to place armed marines on all mail trains.[26]

 
Disused Royal Mail Travelling Post Office Sorting van

A number of high-value mail robberies occurred in the UK after the Second World War, as a result of a lack of improvements in security in the transport of money.[27] One major example was the Eastcastle Street robbery in 1952, involving the theft of £287,000 from a post office van in London. Overall that year, 629 mailbags went missing, and in the following year the figure was 738.[27]

The two significant mail robberies occurred in the early 1960s. In the UK, £2.6 million was taken in the 'Great Train Robbery' of 1963. A year earlier, $1.5 million was stolen from the hold-up of a U.S. Mail truck in Massachusetts. By the end of the 1960s, however, mail robbery had become less common.[27]

The 1976 Sallins Train robbery in Ireland, £200,000 was stolen from the Cork to Dublin mail train and eventually claimed in 1980 as carried out by the Provisional IRA. Five members of the IRSP were arrested and three were falsely accused (one left the country and one refused to sign an alleged confession).[28] The first trial of 65-days was the longest ever in Irish criminal history and collapsed after one of the three judges died.Cite error: The <ref> tag has too many names (see the help page). Kelly was released on humanitarian grounds in 1984, given a presidential pardon in 1992 and received £1,000,000 in compensation.[29] No one stood trial for this robbery.

Post box robbery

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Mail deposited in post boxes have been subject of attempted robbery by thieves[30] and in Denver in 2014, a man with previous mail theft convictions dating from 2008, pled guilty of attempting to obtain a USPS collection mail box master key by threatening a mail carrier with a knife.[31]

Postal facility theft

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In 2006 a 19-year Royal Mail employee, Roy Johnson, was caught in a trap laid for him when customers complained of money missing from their letters that had been handled in the Oldham mail centre, Manchester where Johnson worked as a night manager. Over a two-year period he rifled through mail bags searching for travellers' cheques and foreign currency netting him GB£70,000 that he used to make down-payments of a Jaguar and a Mercedes car and paid for home improvements in cash.[32]

Before Christmas 2007, a letter carrier in the Brooklyn borough of New York, was suspected of stealing mail within his delivery routes. Decoy "test greeting card letters" were added to his mail and after more complaints, a letter addressed to a non-existing address, with cash and an electronic transmitter, was found in his car's glovebox with another 38 envelopes and in the trunk another were 100 torn open envelopes. The grinch-like mailman admitted he had been stealing mail since Valentine's Day and stole more during the holiday periods.[33]

A 2017 USPIS report recounts that they recovered about $3 US million following 1,364 investigations resulting in 409 arrests and more than 1,000 administrative actions against staff during the period October 2016 to September 2017.[34] USPS has online advise for securing mail within its mail centres.[35]

Identity theft

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Mail robbery has sparked identity theft fears because thieves have broken into mailboxes[3] and community mailbox clusters,[1] and with personel information may be able to ruin a person's good credit or even assume their identity.[36] According to USPS, in December 2007 is was fastest growing crime in the United States.[37]

Films

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See also

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References and sources

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Notes
  1. ^ a b "Home & Neighborhood Safety". City of Ventura. Retrieved 30 March 2018.
  2. ^ "US Postal Inspection Service: Mail Theft". USPS. 1 December 2008. Archived from the original on 23 May 2014. Retrieved 20 August 2007. {{cite web}}: |archive-date= / |archive-url= timestamp mismatch; 1 December 2008 suggested (help)
  3. ^ a b Gross, Kristina (11 March 2014). "Identity theft could be behind recent post office break-ins". KXXV Channel 25, Waco. Retrieved 30 March 2018.
  4. ^ Acts of the Privy Council of England. Vol. 2. London: HMSO. 1890. p. 120.
  5. ^ Historical Manuscripts Commission (1899). Report on the Manuscripts of F. W. Leyborne-Popham, Esq. London: HMSO. p. 44.
  6. ^ a b "The Postal Service in 18th Century Britain: Post Roads and Post-Boys". Jane Austen's World. 2009-09-12. Retrieved 30 March 2018.
  7. ^ Ferguson, Stephen (March 2008). Robbery On The Road. Dublin: An Post. pp. 18–47.
  8. ^ a b c d Ferguson, Stephen (2016). The Post Office in Ireland. Newbridge, County Kildare: Irish Academic Press. ISBN 978-1-911024-32-3.
  9. ^ Cork Advertiser (6 December 1817). "Sydney". The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser. p. 3. Retrieved 2 April 2018.
  10. ^ Campbell, Brian (14 April 2014). "President's father took part in wartime IRA raid". The Irish News. Retrieved 10 April 2018.
  11. ^ Ó Duibhir, Liam (2009). The Donegal Awakening: Donegal & the War of Independence. Cork: Mercier Press. pp. 105, 150, 155, 166, 174, 182, 231, 247, 251. ISBN 978-1-85635-632-9.
  12. ^ Hart, Peter (2003). The I.R.A. at War, 1916-1923. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 44. ISBN 978-0-19925-258-9.
  13. ^ Doyle, Tom (2008). The Civil War in Kerry. Cork: Mercier Press. p. 83. ISBN 978-1-85635-590-2.
  14. ^ Rogers, Lindsay (1916). The Postal Power of Congress: A Study in Constitutional Expansion (reprint 2006). Clark, New Jersey: The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. p. 38. ISBN 1-58477-677-3. OCLC 458123147. Retrieved 30 March 2018.
  15. ^ a b "A Chronology of the United States Postal Inspection Service". U.S. Postal Inspection Service. Retrieved 30 March 2018.
  16. ^ "Mail by Rail: Robberies". Moving the Mail. National Postal Museum. Retrieved 30 March 2018.
  17. ^ "Mail Thefts Soar As Thieves Target Mailboxes, Post Office Drop-Offs". CBS Los Angeles. 10 May 2016. Retrieved 31 March 2018.
  18. ^ "Mail Carrier Sentenced For Stealing Gift Cards from Mail" (PDF). Press Release. United States Department of Justice. 18 September 2017. Retrieved 31 March 2018.
  19. ^ "18 US Code § 1708: Theft or receipt of stolen mail matter generally". US Code. Cornell Law School. Retrieved 31 March 2018.
  20. ^ Geri Walton (2014-04-18). "18th and 19th Century: Mail Coach Robberies". Geri Walton. Retrieved 30 March 2018.
  21. ^ "Broadside entitled "Robbery of the Mail Coach"". National Library of Scotland. 2004. Retrieved 30 March 2018.
  22. ^ Rice, James (December 1920). "Remarkable Career of Black Bart". Bankitaly Life. The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco. Retrieved 30 March 2018.
  23. ^ Nevin, David (1974). The Expressman. New York: Time-Life Books. pp. 212–215.
  24. ^ "Black Bart Released". California Digital Newspaper Collection. Daily Alta California. 1888-01-22. Retrieved 30 March 2018.
  25. ^ "Vtbt Vreb hues". The Spectator. 1849-01-06. p. 6. Retrieved 30 March 2018.
  26. ^ "Rail Detectives Victors in War on Crime". Popular Mechanics. 41 (3): 336–339. March 1924.
  27. ^ a b c Thomas, Donald (2006). Villains' Paradise: A History of Britain's Underworld. Pegasus Books. pp. 312–313.
  28. ^ Murtagh, Peter (2015-10-02). "The drama and debacle of the Sallins train robbery". Irish Times. Retrieved 4 April 2018.
  29. ^ Cite error: The named reference wicklow people was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  30. ^ Eichelkraut, Christina (2006-12-29). "Letter box break-in effort fails". Pahrump Valley Times. Archived from the original on 2014-03-03. Retrieved 30 March 2018. {{cite web}}: |archive-date= / |archive-url= timestamp mismatch; 2009-02-10 suggested (help)
  31. ^ Mitchell, Kirk (20 March 2014). "Mastermind of mailbox robbery pleads guilty in federal court". Denver Post. Retrieved 2 April 2018.
  32. ^ "Boss in £70,000 mail theft". Manchester Evening News. 2007-02-15. Retrieved 30 March 2018.
  33. ^ Marzulli, John (8 December 2007). "Mailman arrested for stealing cards". New York Daily News. New York. Retrieved 30 March 2018.
  34. ^ "Internal Mail Theft". United States Postal Inspection Service. 2017. Retrieved 30 March 2018.
  35. ^ "Mail Theft". Publication 166 - Guide to Mail Center Security. USPS. January 2013. Retrieved 30 March 2018.
  36. ^ "Privacy & Identity". Federal Trade Commission. May 2014. Retrieved 30 March 2018.
  37. ^ "Identity Theft: Safeguard your personal information". Publication 280. USPS. December 2007. Retrieved 31 March 2018.
  38. ^ "The Great Train Robbery (1903)". Filmsite.org. Retrieved 30 March 2018.
Sources
  • Denniston, Elinore (1964). America's Silent Investigators. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company. p. 160.
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