The town seemed fairly quiet to the Guelph Police Department in the early weeks of 1908. Aside from such problems as a man “monopolizing the sidewalk with his sleigh,” and a bakery selling bread that was under the standard weight, there were just a few out-of-the-ordinary incidents that called for their attention.
A man calling himself H. Lawrence, described in the Mercury as a “glib talker,” swindled several residents out of money by selling phony magazine subscriptions. Investigating officers found that Lawrence had also been fleecing people in Hamilton and Brantford. He was arrested just outside of Guelph, apparently trying to skip town.
Three Jewish men operating a junk store were charged with violating the Lord’s Day Act when they were seen sorting rags on a Sunday. They said that in keeping with their religion, they had observed the Sabbath on Saturday. The Attorney-General of Ontario decided to drop the charges on the condition that they promise not to do it again. In what the Mercury called “WAR OVER PEANUT TRADE IN THE CITY,” the police denied a permit to a Greek vendor who didn’t speak English.
However, a burglary epidemic was about to make the constables very busy indeed.
It began in mid-February with a series of burglaries in New Hamburg. “CRACKSMEN RAID NEARBY VILLAGE” said the Guelph Mercury, using a common term for thieves who cracked open safes. The robbers didn’t get much from the three businesses they hit, but soon other towns were targeted.
Over the next couple of months, burglars struck in communities all across southern Ontario, including Hamilton, London, Berlin [Kitchener], Waterloo, Guelph, Stratford, Georgetown, Milton, Woodstock and Galt [now part of Cambridge]. They robbed factories, private homes, stores, churches, train stations and hotels.
Sometimes the loot was literally small change – less than a quarter from Guelph’s Trinity Baptist Church. But one jewellery store lost a small fortune in gold and silver watches, and in the village of Blyth the crooks blasted open a bank safe and got away with a large amount of cash. Police tracked two suspects from the Blyth heist as far as Guelph, but there the trail went cold. It would remain cold until August of 1909 when Toronto police arrested a career criminal named Alfred Walmsley.
Meanwhile, Guelph police believed they had a break in the many burglary cases when they learned that constables in Berlin had arrested a suspect named Henry Shafer – alias Jim Ferguson. The Guelph police had offered a reward of $50 (about $1,700 today) for information leading to Shafer’s arrest. He had a long criminal record and had done time in the Kingston Penitentiary. He was believed to once have been in cahoots with the notorious Foxy Smith, whose criminal escapades are described in a previous column of Then and Now.
In the Berlin jail, Shafer boasted that he had given a Guelph police constable the slip, and that if the officer had tried to arrest him, he would have “pumped the policeman full of lead.”
Major Herbert D. Merewether, the High Constable for Wellington County, went to Berlin to interview the prisoner. At first Shafer denied knowing who the visitor was, but later, said Merewether, they had “quite an interesting little conversation.”
Merewether had enough evidence to charge Shafer with several burglaries along with an accomplice named Charles “Casey” Koebel. Shafer confessed to one charge of housebreaking, but denied all other accusations. It certainly didn’t help his case when the Toronto Globe described him as “A BAD, BAD MAN.”
At his trial, Shafer was found guilty on three charges of burglary and sentenced to fifteen years in the dreaded Kingston Pen. His pal Koebel turned King’s evidence, cutting a deal with the prosecution and squealing on Shafer. In court he broke down and cried, and begged the judge to be merciful. He got five years.
Meanwhile, a man named Alex Cudney aroused the suspicion of the police when he tried to sell a fur coat at a second-hand store in Guelph. The coat was one of the items reported stolen during a break-in at a general store in Belwood weeks earlier. Merewether’s county constables raided an old hotel near Marden that Cudney had been using as his own robber’s roost. They found it full of loot stolen from stores, factories, farmhouses and barns, and homes in Guelph, Belwood, Hespeler [now part of Cambridge] and Alma. Besides cash found on the premises, the haul included boots, shoes, fur coats and ruffs, sacks of barley, 125 feet of rope, tools, furniture, a cream separator and 600 pounds [272 kg] of pork. Cudney soon was a guest in Guelph’s Wellington County Jail. Total value of the swag was placed at about $1,000 (more than $34,000 today).
At first Cudney refused to talk to the police. Then he told the Mercury that he would “say guilty to everything,” but that he was “screening pals.”
“I am pleading guilty for other people’s doings,” he said.
Then, instead of taking the rap for others, Cudney named two Guelph men as his accomplices, George Johnson and James Scarrow. In fact, he said Johnson was the brains of the outfit. Johnson and Scarow joined Cudney in the Guelph lockup.
Cudney was not yet 30 years old, and had already served four stints in the Central Prison in Toronto. Now he was facing 25 charges of burglary and theft. At his trial in Guelph that April, he was found guilty of every charge. The judge lectured him about mending his ways and then sentenced him to four years in the Kingston Pen. He added that if Cudney had been armed when he was arrested, he would also have been sentenced to flogging, the extremely painful application of a perforated leather strap to the prisoner’s bare buttocks.
The charges against Johnson and Scarrow were dropped due to lack of evidence. The court believed both men’s claim that Cudney had named them only because he held a grudge for some previous problem and that he was willing to drag them off to prison with him as a means of getting even.
The Mercury reported that when Cudney was led out of the courtroom, he had a slight smile on his face; probably, said the paper, because he’d been expecting a much harsher sentence.
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