The times., 1898-04-17
A GREAT GOLD ROBBERY.
THE DISCOVERY.

ent of that journal:
An extraordinary robbery of gold bull
lion has been discovered here Yesterday
known bullion brokers. received ten cases
which had been consigned to them by
their agents in London. When the cases
were opened it was found that the gold
had been removed from one of them and
bars of lead substituted. The case ap-
peared even to the most minute scrutiny
| to have been untampered with, and the
! seal of the Bank of England at which
institution the gold was purchased and
| packed, was unbroken. The cases arriv-
| ed on board the Cunard liner Gallia, and
1t is at present impossible to say at what
1 point en- route the substitution was made
| The loss is said to be amount to about
| 1900 and this will, of course, be met
| by the underwriters in London, who in
sured the safe delivery of the valuable
| consignment"
The publication of this telegram in Lon
| don caused no little uneasiness. AT the
| time gold was being shipped to New York
| nearly every day and the precautions
! taken to prevent the robbery Were
| thought TO be so stringent that gold was
| looked upon as the safest to insure of
| all cargoes. The underwriters rushed
| from thoughtless confidence to an equally
thoughtleSs panic, and insurance rates
were more than doubled This hit the
| bullion brokers, who were very angry
! The newspapers cast from one to another
| RECONSTRUCTED guesses as to how the
robbery occurred, without adding to the
| sum OF knowledge, and the interested
! public hungered for an authoritative
| statement of facts After a week or
| two of silence this statement came from
| the Economist. in the form of an ad-
mirable article, which gave all that has
| yet been made known concerning most
| ingenious crime No further losses
Were reported, and the city, which learns
| little and forgets everything. forgot the
ROBBERY as soon as the newspapers
| ceased to mention it. The Economist
| said:
When we read of the recent remark
| able gold robbery, two points struck us
| as being incomprehensible. According to
| the Times, lead was substituted for the
| gold in one of Messrs. Raphael & Mon
/ tagu's cases and the seal Of the Bank
| OF england was unhrolzen. Now gold u.s.
! bulk for bulk, nearly twice as heavy as
lead-the proportion being roughly 10 to
! II; how. then. could the base metal be
! substituted for the precious one without
| the difference in weight being at once
| perceiVed2 When we reflected further
! transport are carefully weighed by every
! railway and steamship company by which
! they are carried, and that the weights
| are compared with those given in the re-
! ceipts which the companies sign. thu
! matter became the more mysterious and
/ we grew near to believing that the ex-
| cellent Times correspondent had some
| how muddled the affair. In this we did
him an injustice. He was as accurate as
Z he n q ri al
nit. The fact that a bank seal was
! unbroken was a severe difficulty to u.s.
/ though not SO great as that of the sub
4 stitutiOn of lead for gold. One hears of
/ the successful imitation of seals. but IL
/ gives one an unpleasant shock to reealize
! that even the seal of the Bank of Eng
| land is not sacred, that 1t can be imi-
! tated readily and perfectly, and that its
! imitation is a detail of quite secondary
/ difficulty where bullion thieves are con-
/ cerned. We felt that our duty toward the
] business community of the great City of
! London compelled US to clear up the cir
| cumstances of this robbery to the best of
/ our ability, and we accordingly tele-
! graphed to a valued correspondent in
New York, directing him to supply us
/ with the fullest details. We have received
/ our correspondent report, and we may
: say at once that, much as we reprobate
the robbery as an immoral violation of
/ the sanctity of property, we cannot but
! admire the extraordinary cleverness of
! its perpetrators.
ITO make ourselves clearly understood
we must direct the attention of our read
ers toward some figures. The ten cases
which were consigned to Messrs. Raph-
/ ael & Montagu were provided and pack
/ ed by the Bank of England and were
similar to those always used for trans
porting gold bars. Each case contained
4 five bars, and each bar was six inches
! long, four inches broad, and one and
! half inches thick. The weight of each
bar was 363 Troy ounces, and the value
was about 81 400. The wood of the cases
was two inches thick so that when the
! top was put on the outside dimensions of
each case were: Length, ten inches
| breadth eight inches and height eleven
and a half inches. After the covers were
| fastened, strips of hoop iron were whip
ped round top and bottom and nailed
down, and the banks seal was impressed
! on wax in such a manner that the COW
ers could not possibly be removed with
/ out the seals being broken. We may add
! that the ten cases were packed in the
| courtyard of the Bank of England in the
| presence of one of Messrs. Raphael &
| Montagus London agents. They We're
| then placed on a van belonging to the
! London and Northwestern Railway Com
| pany and carried at once to EuSton sta
| ton. Little more than half an hour
| elapsed between the time when the van
| left the bank and the time when the IIiv-
erpool express left Euston.
THE Times correspondent was practf-
| cally right when he said that lead was
substituted for gold but he made one
apparently small but really vital omis-
sion He did not say that an entire case
po& as Wel as contents, was stolen and
a new one substituted in it's place. By
TINS simple but vastly ingenious means,
the difference between the specific crawl
| ties of lead and gold was overcome The
| thieves evidently were familiar with the
| size and appearance of the Bank of Eng
lands bullion cases, and they provided
| themselves with a similar one for the
purpose of their crime. They then care
iully worked out the relative specific
graVities of lead and gold, and discovered
that bars of lead seven and a half inches
long, five and half thick would weigh
as nearly as possible the same as the
bank bars of gold, which were six
inches long. four inches broad and one
and half inches thick. The inside meas
urements of the substituted case We're at
first, of course, the same as those of the
banks cases, but these were subsequently
increased by simply cutting away the
inside wood until the space was large
enough to receive the leaden bars BY
means of this device the outside meas
urements of the case were undisturbed
and the thickness of the wood at the cor
ners where ii could be seen remained at
two inches. After the cutting had been
completed the sides of the case were still
about one and a quarter inches thick,
few weeks If we don't get this eoId