‘Yeggs’ made big impact in 1907

“GEORGE F. DART HANGED HIMSELF,” announced a headline in the Bangor Daily News on April 3, 1907. “Tragic Death of Yeggman Widely Known in and About Bangor.” Dart had been suspected but never charged with burglarizing the Brewer Savings Bank a few years earlier. He hanged himself in a Massachusetts prison where he was incarcerated for a later heist, which had taken place in East Boston. It had had a “Wild West climax” with guns blazing. A member of the “gang of yeggmen” to which Dart belonged was killed.

Dart was a “yeggman, pugilist and all-around crook,” said the newspaper. We all know what pugilists and all-around crooks are, but the word yeggman, which I have used three times so far in this column, is something of a mystery today. A slang expression at the beginning of the 20th century, it usually referred to “cracksmen” who used dynamite caps and nitroglycerin, or “oil” to use the yeggs’ own lingo, to blow open safes.

Small wedges served to widen the crevices of safe doors, and then soap was applied to putty up these crevices to retain the nitroglycerin poured into them. Larger tools such as hammers and crowbars were stolen from nearby railroad stations and blacksmith shops, according to a wire story published in the Bangor Daily Commercial on Oct. 23 describing the difference between yeggs and an older breed of gentlemen bank robbers who dressed nattily and took pride in not killing anyone.

Frequently, yegg gangs targeted rural post offices and railroad stations where they stole cash and stamps. They sent out scouts, known as “gay cats” in the jargon, to find offices that were relatively remote and unprotected. They were often violent, firing guns and shooting to kill if threatened, said the story.

Yeggs were transients who stole rides in empty boxcars and lived in cheap boarding houses or vacant barns, stealing food as they traveled. Each spring the Bangor papers announced their arrival along with the usual run of hoboes.

“YEGG SEASON IS ON,” the Commercial declared on May 28, 1907. “Crooks Beginning Their Annual Tour of Eastern Maine.” Bangor police told the newshounds that yeggs used Bangor as a central point for scouting the countryside. In the Queen City, they could live anonymously, although frequently they were under surveillance, according to the police.

The papers recorded several jobs that year that sounded like the work of yeggs. “MADE BIG HAUL AT BROWNVILLE: Burglars Rob Post Office of $400 While Holding Armed Citizens at Bay. No Clue as to Their Identity,” said a headline on May 28 on the Bangor Daily News’ front page. Four burglars blew up the safe and stole $100 in cash and $300 in stamps.

Three charges were used. A “telephone girl” or operator heard the first blast and attempted to alert sleeping citizens, but nobody appeared on the scene until it was all over. “All kinds of stories are in circulation about constables who waited to shave themselves, and a man who couldn’t find the right pants and another who wasn’t feeling very well anyway. … Some of these stories are no doubt entirely without foundation,” said the newspaper. Then the yeggs left as coolly as they had appeared, their departure witnessed by several citizens.

Another early morning job that was supposedly the work of yeggmen was recorded in the newspapers on Nov. 8. “ROBBERS BLOW SAFE AT HAMPDEN POST OFFICE,” read a headline in the Commercial. “Yegg Men Got in Their Work at Lower Corner Friday Morning – Loss Is Several Hundred Dollars.” The take was in stamps and money orders. Explosions were heard by people all over the area, including the family living over the post office, but no one seemed to know where the racket was coming from and no one came out of their dwellings to find out until a carriage clattered away into the darkness.

Later the same day, the American Express office located at the railroad station in Hermon Center was robbed of about $90. The office was empty and the thief broke in and pried open a drawer. The newspaper reports linked the Hampden and Hermon burglaries with another break-in that had occurred within the last 24 hours at the Bangor home of W.H. Salley. A band of yeggs, or sneak thieves at any rate, was in the area for sure, the newspapers surmised, even though the crimes seemed to have little connection.

In December, Bangor’s two competing newspapers got into a public quarrel about whether there were really any yeggmen in the Queen City at all. The Commercial claimed police sources said many well dressed yeggmen were lurking about the city long after they had usually left the area for the winter. The Bangor Daily News retorted that it had been told by its own confidential police source that only once in the last decade had there been any “real yeggs” in Bangor. The current crop of criminals were just a bunch of pickpockets and sneak thieves.

Whatever the case, the days of the gentlemen bank robbers were about over. These legendary cracksmen had planned their jobs carefully, carried special tools and often pocketed a great deal of money. They included the famous Jimmy Hope, who was tried and acquitted in Bangor on charges he had attempted to rob a Dexter bank, and the dapper Bowdoinham bank robbers, who served time in the Maine State Prison.

The yeggmen, in Bangor or wherever, signaled a new and nastier era. When combined with the automobile and automatic weapons, they would produce unsavory killers like Al Brady. He was gunned down in Bangor some years later as everyone knows, but he was only the latest descendant of the out-of-town bank robbers and yeggmen, their cousins, who once visited the Queen City.

Wayne E. Reilly can be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.net