Last week’s column described a robbery at the Mount Forest’s Royal Bank branch on Dec. 14, 1922, and the subsequent pursuit of one of the suspects, Lewis Austin, to the American midwest, New York City, and his eventual extradition from Little Rock, Arkansas in February 1924.
The authorities treated Austin as a dangerous and desperate character, but their reasons for doing so are unclear. They apparently believed that he was involved in a series of robberies in western Canada, but they had insufficient evidence to lay charges.
The robbery at Mount Forest was, in many respects, an inept one. The three men involved bungled their efforts to open the main vault. Their take was something like $40,000, but almost all of that was in fully registered war bonds that would be virtually impossible to convert to cash. Their cash haul was less than $5, taken from the postage stamp box.
Despite a 24-hour guard, authorities were in a panic that Austin would escape. Those fears were fuelled on Feb. 28, 1924, when a pedestrian passing the Guelph jail reported that he had heard the distinct sound of a hacksaw cutting metal very early in the morning. Jail officials immediately assumed that Austin had managed to get a saw smuggled into the jail, and was taking steps to make good his escape before his preliminary hearing.
After a thorough examination of Austin, his cell, and the bars on the cell, the authorities could find no evidence that any bars had been tampered with. Nevertheless, they increased the watch on Austin and his cell.
Later on the day of his suspected attempt to cut the bars of his cell, Austin had a second appearance in court for a further remand. The Ontario Provincial Police, still fearing he might attempt to escape, sent two men from Kitchener to escort him to the court room and back. The whole time he was handcuffed to one of the officers.
Meanwhile, two officers were busy gathering evidence. They spent two days in Mount Forest getting statements from people with a connection to the case, including three employees of the Royal Bank.
Crown Attorney J.M. Kearns put together his case carefully. Lew Austin, after a second remand, had his day in court on March 11, 1924. Despite the inconvenience in transporting the prisoner under guard, the crown decided to hold the session in Mount Forest, in the town’s council chambers.
The party from Guelph travelled by train. It included, in addition to the prisoner, a provincial constable, three OPP officers, the accused’s wife, a court stenographer, and two police officers from New York City. A large sleigh conveyed the party from the Canadian National station to the Mount Forest council chambers.
Though the bank robbery had happened 15 months earlier, it still drew intense interest in Mount Forest. A large crowd was at the station when the train pulled in, and most of the curious followed the sleigh to the town hall, where more people waited, including several out-of-town reporters. Several of the Toronto dailies were covering the story on an ongoing basis.
There was not room to accommodate all the spectators in the council room. When all the seats were filled, police closed and locked the doors.
Lewis Austin did not strike most people as a wild-eyed outlaw. He appeared in court neatly dressed, and looking somewhat pale, but quite composed, and almost indifferent to the proceedings. His wife was young, well dressed and attractive, and seemed to take more interest in the hearing than her husband.
The hearing began at once. The first witnesses called were two bank clerks from the Royal Bank, and then R.A. Fowlie, the manager. They described the condition of the branch office before and after the burglary. Crown Attorney Kearns questioned Fowlie at length concerning the rifling of the safety deposit boxes.
Kearns called the renters of six safety deposit boxes. They described their losses, which consisted in large part of registered bonds, many of which the New York police had found on Austin when they arrested him in New York City.
Over the noon hour, the crowd outside the town hall increased. When the magistrate called for a break for lunch those in the court room had difficulty getting out and back in. The two New York detectives described their arrest of Austin, and the details of the bonds they found on him, and had confiscated.
One of them told the court that he had, before the morning session began, turned over the bonds to Manager Fowlie of the bank for restoration to their rightful owners. Capt. Gregan of the OPP confirmed that the serial numbers of those bonds matched those reported by the renters of the safety deposit boxes.
Last of the witnesses was Dan Cummings, of Mount Forest’s Grand Central Hotel. He stated that Austin looked like a man who had stayed at the Grand Central immediately prior to the robbery, but he could not be certain. His testimony was the weakest part of the prosecution’s case.
The magistrate stated that he had heard sufficient evidence to hold Austin for trial. The session was over in plenty of time for everyone to catch the afternoon train. Austin was back in his cell that evening.
Lew Austin had a three month wait for the actual trial. That session opened in Guelph on June 19 before Judge Anson Spotton. Austin and his lawyer brought in two witnesses for the defence. One was his mother, who claimed that Lew was with her at home at the time of the robbery. Another woman, Fannie Calout, of Memphis, stated that Austin was with her sister two days later.
The Crown’s evidence repeated in large part what had been offered at the preliminary hearing in Mount Forest. The two New York officers were back, and confirmed that Austin was in possession of bonds worth $16,700 when they arrested him.
The jury rejected the testimony of Austin’s mother and girl friend. His wife, it appears, by this point had drifted on. There is no mention in any of the accounts of her presence at the trial.
At the conclusion of the trial Lewis Austin left Guelph for the Kingston Penitentiary to serve his two year sentence.
The Lewis Austin case is an early example of the successful cooperation of the local municipal police with the OPP, and of the involvement of the latter with several American forces. The trial and conviction, though, came at great financial cost. The OPP kept the matter on their active blotter for more than a year. There were costs involved in pursuing his extradition, and in sending two officers to Little Rock to retrieve him. As well, there were further costs in bringing two detectives from New York City to testify on two separate occasions.
It seems like a lot of effort and expense to convict one man of three involved in a bank robbery that was not very successful. Quite possibly, there was more to the case than came out in court: the authorities may have had suspicions that Austin was involved in other, more serious crimes, and that it was best to get him off the streets.
He was able to afford expensive legal counsel, and bring in witnesses from the United States, presumably at his own cost, at a time when he did not have any legal employment.
All in all, the 1922 Mount Forest bank robbery is one of the more interesting cases in the legal and criminal history of Wellington County.