Hathaway, Soule & Harrington Robbery

The Middleborough branch factory of Hathaway, Soule & Harrington achieved an unexpected local notoriety when during the early morning of October 25, 1895, its safe was robbed.  Fortunately, a clipping from the Middleboro Gazette recounting the incident survives to recount the tale nearly in full.

For the first time for many years safe robbers visited our town, Thursday afternoon and night.  Shortly after 1 o'clock, as watchman Charles Crandall of Hathaway, Soule & Harrington's shoe factory on Cambridge street was descending to the main entry of the factory in making his usual round, he was seized by four men, who immediately blindfolded him and proceeded to blow open and rob the safe.

The burglars evidently watched Mr. Crandall as he went to various points about the building, and when he was on the upper floor forced open the front door.  Seating themselves where they were not seen by the night watchman until he stepped off the last stair they had him completely by surprise and at their mercy in an instant.

Mr. Crandall at first thought it a joke of some of the shop hands.  He carries a cane to assist him in going up and down stairs, and when they first seized him with the remark, "We've got you," he lifted this stick above his head, saying, "You have, have you."  Mr. Crandall still thought it a joke, and had no idea of striking with his stick, but one of the fellows said afterward that he was about to deal him a stunning blow, when thoughts of his own father caused him to change his mind, and Mr. Crandall escaped personal injury.

"You are a cranky little fellow, but it is of no use.  We won't hurt you if you keep quiet."  Realizing that one against four was an unequal contest, he submitted to being blindfolded.  The robbers sat him upon the stairs, and one on either side stood by him while the other two proceeded to the office, where they blew open the safe, as the watchman thinks, by the use of powder, judging from the smell.

Judging from the cool manner in which they proceed, Mr. Crandall thinks confederates were outside.  He remarked to them that he at first thought that they were some of the employees, and that the thought of burglars had not entered his mind.  "How do you know we are not employees of the factory," asked one of them.  "There are only four of you," said Mr. Crandall.  "You don't know but there are twenty of us, but you have the number inside right," was the reply.

Mr. Crandall asked them if they had not been at work near by on another break a short time before, but they said "no," and he thinks that a slight noise he heard a little while before was caused by forcing the door.

The safe was blown open probably at 2.25 a. m., as the clock over the safe stopped at that time.  Two of the fellows were masked and above average height.  The other two Mr. Crandall cannot describe, as he did not see them.  The report made by the explosion was quite loud, and was heard by several residents in the neighborhood, but nothing was thought about it as the trains make so much noise all night.  The door was blown completely off and several chairs demolished and a window broken.

The robbers were sadly disappointed when they rifled the safe.  They secured only a very small sum.

That a former employee was a leader in the break seems to be indicated by several things said.  When they found so little money this man remarked, "When I used to work here the pay roll was kept in the safe."  They seemed very much chagrined when they realized how little they secured.

The watchman asked if they found much, and one of them answered, "Not enough to pay for our trouble."  Mr. Crandall told them that the firm's methods had changed of late relative to money matters.

William H. Wilde, the book-keeper at the factory, is away on his wedding tour, so that the exact amount they secured could not be learned.  The weekly pay roll frequently amounts to $2,000, and today is pay-day.  It was this sum that the gang undoubtedly hoped to secure.  Mr. Hathaway of the firm was in town, yesterday, but the money for today's pay-roll was not put into the safe.

Failing to secure any amount of cash they turned their attention to tools.  They inquired where the machine room was, but Mr. Crandall told them he knew very little about the particular places where tools were kept, as he never visited the factory in the day time.

"How do you get down cellar," asked the apparent leader.  "That's a pretty question for one to ask who has worked here as long as you have," retorted one of his mates.
The gang appeared in no hurry to leave.  They treated Mr. Crandall with the utmost consideration.  Before they left they carried him to the workroom and tied him into a chair, so that he could no get away.

When engineer W. H. F. Pettee arrived, early in the morning, he was greatly surprised to find the door open, but he was speechless when he beheld the watchman bound and blindfolded.  He quickly released him and learned the night's events.

It is stated tat one of the men dropped a 'kerchief and came near leaving it.  When he discovered it, he exclaimed, "I musn't leave that; Emma always puts my name on them."

Their whole conduct seems to indicate that they were not experts at the business.

The same gang probably visited Mount Carmel railroad station, Thursday afternoon, during the absence of the station agent, and secured about $10 from the money drawer.  It was a poor job all round.

The shoe factory break was the most sensational since the memorable "town safe" robbery, nearly 25 years ago, when the robbers secured a large amount in valuable bonds and cash.

Mr. Crandall is none worse for the night's excitement, except that it was quite a shock to his nerves; but he showed no white feather.  He is glad however, that the company are not heavy losers by the robbery.

The greatest loss to the corporation will probably be the damage to the safe.  So far as can be learned, no tools of value were taken.

Little else has been left on record of the crime, although it remained in the memory of the Alden family which managed he factory at the time, and was later passed down through the Barden family.  In 1989, George M. Barden, Jr., recalled the incident in the pages of the Middleborough Antiquarian and told a slightly different version in which Crandall, while not implicated in the robbery itself, was culpable for permitting unfettered access to the factory by the perpetrators.

Hathaway, Soule & Harrington employed a Civil War veteran to serve as night watchman at the factory.  He would come to work in the evening and spend the night all alone in the five-storied building, making the rounds periodically to make sure everything was secure.  When two congenial young strangers made his acquaintance and offered to keep him company through his lonely hours he was only too glad to accept.  For a week or more they spent almost every night with him at the factory, whiling away the time at checkers and listening to his tales of Civil War adventures.  They also took note of his inspection routine.  Finally, one fateful night, after the three had finished the midnight lunch, one of the strangers said:

"Old man, we are going to tie you in your chair to keep you out of trouble and then you will hear an explosion louder than anything you ever heard in the Civil War!"

Within minuted the watchman was securely tied to his chair and the promised explosion, when the strangers blew the door off the safe in the office, was indeed impressive.  Their carefully planned getaway involved the use of a railroad handcar, the old-fashioned kind that was powered by hand pumping, previously placed by the yeggs on the tracks that ran just behind the factory.  Taking their bag of loot, they raced to the handcar and began pumping feverishly to put Middleboro behind them as fast as possible - a scene right out of the Keystone Cops.  Family tradition has told this writer that they made it to Bridgewater before they were apprehended and the loot recovered.

Despite the impression left by Barden's account, the perpetrators appear to have gone undiscovered for at least a short period of time as indicated by the Middleboro Gazette which reported that "the recent Hathaway, Soule & Harrington burglary case is in the hands of two of the most skillful detectives in this section."  While there was much initial uncertainty regarding the amount of money taken from the safe, the newspaper report confirmed that "the amount taken by he cracksmen is now definitely determined to have been less than $50."  Though the burglars had hoped to discover the firm's large payroll in the safe, a number of developments had conspired against them including a recent state law which required employees of corporations to be paid weekly and with which the firm had been in compliance with since the summer.  Most crucially and for reasons now unknown, the payroll was not placed in the factory safe on Thursday, October 24.

Barden, George M., Jr.  Middleborough Antiquarian, "A Shoe Business, A Robbery and a Fire", 27: 3, December, 1989, 5+.
Middleboro Gazette, "Bold Burglars", October 25, 1895:4; "Middleboro", November 1, 1895:4; "Twenty-Five Years Ago", August 6, 1920:2.

"A Daring Burglary", 1886

Perhaps the most notorious case of breaking and entering into a private residence in Middleborough history occurred over a century ago in 1886, a frightening incident marked by both its brutality and its "humanity".



The robbery occurred at the home of Hartley Wood (1811-89), the small Cape-style house which now stands on the corner of East Grove and Fairview Streets opposite the entrance to Middleborough High School, which the septuagenarian Wood shared in 1886 with his sister, Eleanor (1818-94), who was also of advanced years.



Smith & Wesson Model No. 3

Schofield Revolver, late 19th century

Photo courtesy of Bob Adams

The Plymouth Old Colony Memorial reported the details of the crime: Eleanor Wood, "a sister of Hartley, who keeps house for him, had gone to bed, and Hartley, who sat by the stove, was overpowered by two men who presented pistols at his head. The burglars tied him and his sister, whom they dragged from the bed, and then ransacked the house at their leisure. They secured $77, and then covering their prisoners up with bed clothes as they lay on the floor and placing a pan of milk at the head of each they withdrew." Near midnight, Wood was able to free a hand and extricate a pocket knife which he used first to liberate himself, then his sister.

The men were “masked ... and wore paper caps” to disguise their identities. (A month following the incident, enamel cloth masks were discovered near Grove Street and were presumed to be the masks worn by the criminals).

The community was so galvanized by the attack upon two of its elderly residents that it offered a $500 reward for the conviction of the perpetrators, and employed private detectives to solve case.

Though it appears that the burglars were never tried for the crime, their identity and the details of that frightful evening became known when one of the two robbers confessed some three years following the incident while serving time in the New Jersey state prison for a similar crime. The robber - Ino Baum - had originally come to Middleborough in 1885 as a laborer on the East Grove Street pumping station, then under construction. At that time, East Grove Street east of the Nemasket River was a lonely road passing through pine woods, marked only by the home of Hartley Wood perched upon the crest of what was still then known as Waterman's Hill.

Idle remarks among the construction crew focused upon the distant house on the hill. Wrote Baum, "I had heard casually that they [the Woods] were stingy and distrustful and would not even trust their money to a bank, although they were rich." From this loose talk, Baum formulated his plan to one day return, and rob, the Woods.

Late in January, 1886, Baum returned to Middleborough in the company of Louis Price, described only as "an Italian," to implement his plan. The two men reached the Wood house unnoticed about 7 in the evening after having stolen a length of clothesline along the way. It was shortly after 9 when the two entered the house, oilcloth masks concealing their faces, with Baum leading the way. "We both had pistols in our hands when we entered the kitchen and I walked straight up towards Mr. Wood. He seemed thunderstruck with fear, and so was the dog, who never moved during the time we were in the house, but lay behind the stove as if dead."

Baum pushed Mr. Wood to his knees, at which point Price attempted to tie him. "When Mr. Wood saw our purpose was to bind him, he commenced to struggle violently and to call out 'What do you want? Do you mean to kill me?'

The ensuing struggle apparently roused Wood's sister who "seemed very much inclined to take a hand in the struggle, calling at the same time with all her might." Baum readily caught Miss Wood, though she continued to struggle, "trying to pull off my mask and to tear my clothes. I was reluctant to use force against her but she kept fighting till I was forced to trip her up and in falling she must have struck her face," sustaining a black eye.

Eventually, both Woods were bound and gagged, but not before Miss Wood could affirm "Oh! you, you'll meet your Judge; you'll meet your Judge."

The house was searched for the considerable sums the Woods were rumored to have kept there, but in this task the burglars were sorely disappointed. Though $200 was discovered, much of it had to be left behind as easily identified "marked or peculiar pieces of money." Also discovered were "a number of bank books and other valuable papers and a notice from the cashier of the local bank, notifying Mr. Wood that the deposits to his credit exceeded ... the amount the rules of the bank permitted to stand to the same name." Not only had the Woods deposited their money in the Middleboro Savings Bank, but to such an extent that the bank was obliged to refuse any additional deposits. In this, the Woods may have been motivated by an earlier 1875 robbery at their house in which $10 was removed from an upstairs room.

The chatter among workmen upon the Middleborough pumping station in 1885 which had provided the rationale for Baum's plan had been untrue.

"When I thought there was nothing more to be found I carried bedding to the kitchen and covered them and placed milk near them where they could reach it .... Before leaving I saw to it that the ropes were so that they might free themselves, after some time, if they made any exertions." Additionally, household goods were deliberately strewn about the front of the house and the front door left wide open in order to attract the attention of passersby in the morning should the Woods not be able to free themselves during the night.

The two men made their escape to Boston and, later, separately to New York where they lost contact with one another. Though Baum avowed that his accomplice Price "was no criminal," Baum, himself, continued to pursue his dubious life of crime which eventually caught up with him in New Jersey.

One wonders whether at the time of his New Jersey conviction Baum recalled the warnings of Miss Wood many months earlier that he would "meet his Judge"? And, so he did.

Murder on North Main Street, 1925

Mercifully, murders in Middleborough and Lakeville have been relatively few, though they are not entirely unknown. One of the more lurid crime stories in Middleborough's history is little recalled today despite the fact that it spanned nearly the entire second quarter of the twentieth century. The gruesome shooting death of forty-one year old Katherine Harriet Cooke on April 13, 1925, was locally unprecedented, for it was only twenty-three years later that her estranged husband, Napoleon J. Cooke, would be acquitted of killing her "in a fit of jealous rage."

Cooke, a native of Canada and a French-speaker, had emigrated to the United States either in 1908 or 1910, settling at Newport, Vermont, where in 1920 he was engaged as a sawyer in a veneer mill. Cooke's wife, also a Canadian emigrant who arrived in 1911, was ten years younger than her husband. Sometime in the early 1920s, the Cookes came to Middleborough from Vermont, opening a small restaurant which they relocated a short time after their arrival to the Nemasket House hotel on North Main Street. The middle-aged Cookes, like many during that period, struggled financially, and Cooke had held jobs as a boat pilot and Boston & Maine Railroad worker prior to coming to Middleborough.

Though they hoped that Middleborough would provide them a new start, the Cookes continued to experience financial difficulties, as well as marital problems, so much so that Mrs. Cooke moved out of their small apartment in the Norris Building on North Main Street next to the hotel, in the early spring of 1925.

Cooke was stated to have appeared "morose" at the time, and when he failed to appear at the restaurant the evening of Sunday, April 12, Nemasket House proprietor Fred L. Hammond went to Cooke's apartment, but could get no response. Concerned, Hammond notified patrolman William Murdock who, gaining admittance to the apartment, found Cooke suffering from a headache. While not an extraordinary circumstance, it was later "thought that he was planning the affair which took place the next day."

Though she had moved from their apartment in the Norris Building, Mrs. Cooke returned there on Monday, April 13, to conduct errands for Mrs. Sarah Matheson, who was confined to her neighboring apartment by a case of the measles. As Mrs. Cooke was returning from the post office and climbing the stairs of the Norris Building, she was met by her husband standing in the open doorway of their apartment. Raising a revolver, he pointed it at his wife, and fired point blank.

The first shot missed and struck the wall, and Mrs. Cooke fell, breaking her glasses and scratching her face. Cooke's second shot missed as well. "She vainly tried to reach Mrs. Matheson's room but before she got there, Cooke seized her and dragged her through his own rooms to the bedroom and throwing her on the bed sent a bullet crashing through her head, killing her instantly." Mrs. Cooke's futile struggle had been made all the more difficult by a fact little reported at the time - she had previously lost her left arm while working in a laundry in Vermont.

While Mrs. Matheson, alerted by the shots in the neighboring apartment, shouted for help, Cooke fired two additional shots - one into his side, and one into his head.

When Chief of Police Alden C. Sisson and Patrolman Alton R. Rogers arrived, they found a horrific scene. Mrs. Cooke was pronounced dead by Doctors Edward L. Perry and C. S. Cummings, both of whom held little hope for her husband's survival. Mrs. Cooke's remains were removed to Soule's mortuary and Rogers left in charge of the scene, which had begun to attract the curious, the shooting having occurred just before noon in the business district of town when many people were present.

"Later in the afternoon, Cooke regained his senses and asked for water. He was then rushed to the hospital." Cooke, in fact, recovered sufficiently to be arraigned for murder on April 22, before Judge Nathan Washburn of Middleborough. Cooke at that time presented a pathetic appearance, "haggard and worn", he could only partially comprehend the situation around him. He sat "with a glassy stare in his eyes ... apparently not able to hear what was going on, owing to the deafness caused by his attempt of suicide by shooting himself in the head."

Cooke only mumbled at the arraignment hearing, and Washburn ordered a plea of not guilty entered on his behalf. Cooke was held without bail at the Plymouth County House of Correction until his indictment by the grand jury in June, 1925. In accordance with the law, Cooke was then examined by two psychiatrists who found him to be not of sound mind, and he was committed to the State Farm at Bridgewater to a ward for the criminally insane. At the time, many believed this to be the final sad ending to a sad affair.

It was not. Twenty three years later, in August, 1948, Cooke, then in his seventies, was transferred from Bridgewater to the House of Correction preparatory to standing trial for his actions years earlier, it then being believed that he was competent to stand trial.

District Attorney Edmund R. Dewing nolprossed the murder charge on which Cooke had initially been indicted, and entered a charge of manslaughter, a lesser offense. Judge Frank E. Smith presided and the few witnesses then still alive, including Sisson, Rogers, Mrs. Matheson, Dr. Perry and Dr. A. V. Smith, then assistant medical examiner on the case, testified to the recollections of an event nearly a quarter century earlier.

On October 28, 1948, the jury found Cooke not guilty by reason of insanity, some twenty-three and a half years after he had shot his wife, and following twenty-three years of confinement at the State Farm. He was remanded to Bridgewater following his trial, a sad and broken man.

Illustrations:

"North Main Street - Business Section Looking South, Middleboro, Mass.", picture postcard, "Tichnor Quality View", Tichnor Brothers, Inc., early 20th century
North Main Street as it appeared about a decade before the Cooke murder was a busy mixed commercial and residential street. The Nemasket House where the Cookes operated a small restaurant appears as the columned building at the right. Immediately adjoining it though out of view to the right was the Norris Block, the residence of the Cookes and the scene of the murder.

View of North Main Street, Middleborough, MA, photograph, early 20th century
Few views of the Norris Block remain. Here it is seen as the building at the far right sometime in the mid-1910s during a less tragic time in its history. Originally occupied by shoe manufacturing and retail firms, the building was acquired by T. A. Norris of Brockton in 1905. The upper floor included a number of apartments, including one occupied by the Cookes. The building was later used by Winthrop-Atkins and a Community Center operated by the District Nursing Association before being demolished along with the Nemasket House in 1939. The site of the Norris Block is now occupied by the western end of the Grant Building.