London Evening Advertiser
- MAYOR AGREES TO STAND FOR RE-ELECTION
- 3 Missionaries Are Liberated
- Loot Mail of $160,000, Kill Guard
This London, Ontario evening paper led its local news with Mayor John M. Moore reversing his announced retirement. After a deputation brought him a petition signed by 1,500 citizens, he agreed to let his name stand for nomination in December, thanked the council and the civic boards, and described his habit of leaving City Hall departments to their heads. From abroad, a Peking dispatch reported that three American missionaries seized by bandits in western Hunan had been freed after 18 days without any ransom being paid. A report from Elizabeth, New Jersey, described a gang of ten or more men who raked a mail convoy with rapid-fire guns, killed a man named Enz, wounded a postal worker and a motorcycle patrolman, and escaped with registered mail that included $160,000 in currency.
This reading covers three excerpts from a partially legible page. The supplied OCR was badly corrupted, so the excerpts were transcribed from the page images. The mayoral and mail-robbery stories begin mid-sentence, and the mayoral story breaks off mid-sentence. Columns cut off at tile edges, including a Washington biography, an election-figures table and a poison-suicide story, were not transcribed. The consulted sources do not explain why Moore first decided to retire, do not say whether he was returned by acclamation in December 1926, do not name the group that held the missionaries, and do not record any conviction for the Elizabeth robbery.
Translation
MAYOR AGREES TO STAND FOR RE-ELECTION
[?] manner of conducting public business throughout the past year guarantees a second term of office. A large deputation waited upon the mayor at his office. They begged him to reconsider his decision to retire as announced in The Advertiser two months ago. They presented him with the petition bearing names of 1,500 representative citizens, and expressed their readiness to support him in every way possible if he favored them with his decision to be a mayoralty candidate in December.
Reconsiders.
"I have reconsidered my decision and will allow my name to stand for nomination after listening to the deputation on behalf of the people who signed this petition," the mayor announced today. "I wish to express my appreciation for the co-operation given me by the members of the council throughout the year, and also for the advice and support offered by all other boards in the business of the year.
"It has always been my principle to leave the management of the several departments of the City Hall under the department heads, and I have always
3 Missionaries Are Liberated
Peking, Oct. 14. — Three United States missionaries captured by bandits at Miliwan, Western Hunan Province, at the end of September, were released Monday after having been detained 18 days. No ransom was paid for their release. They are Miss Minerva Weil and Karl H. Beck of the Reformed Mission and Miss Lydia Koebbe of the Evangelical Mission.
Loot Mail of $160,000, Kill Guard
[?] other men, John Quinn, also a postal employee, was wounded, and Motorcycle Patrolman Chrystman, who was escorting the truck was knocked from his machine when one of the bandits' cars collided with him. He was shot as he lay on the ground. The bandits got away. It is believed there were ten or more in the party. Four were counted in a green touring car. There were at least six other in a sedan, according to bystanders. The bandits fled toward Newark. They escaped with an unknown amount of loot, which included $160,000 in currency, being transported to the Elizabethport Trust Company, payrolls of the Singer Manufacturing Company, and other registered mail. The business district was in a state of terror as the bandits covered the streets with bullets. A rain of bullets was poured into the victims from rapid-fire .45 calibre guns, discharging 15 bullets consecutively from one pull of the trigger. The bandits drove one of their cars back and forth over Enz' body several times during the transfer of the mail sacks.
Context
How John M. Moore became mayor, and how his second term ended
The mayor in this report is John Mackenzie Moore, a London-born architect and engineer. His biography records that in 1925 he received a petition with 1,500 signatures urging him to run for mayor, and that, citing this petition, he challenged the popular incumbent George Wenige and won. The Advertiser gives exactly the same figure, 1,500 names, for the petition presented in October 1926. Either two petitions of the same size were organized a year apart, or later accounts have merged the two episodes; the page cannot settle which. London's mayors had originally served one-year terms, which is why the deputation could speak of a 'second term' and ask Moore to run in December. His biography says he won reelection in 1927 but had to resign before the end of that year because of illness, so the second term the petitioners wanted was cut short.
The mayor's principle of leaving departments to their heads
Moore's statement breaks off as he explains that he had always left the management of City Hall departments to the department heads. Later accounts of his mayoralty fit that description. During his term he commissioned new sewers and a dam and reorganized the city administration, and when he died in 1930 an obituary praised him for knowing exactly when to leave an official alone to do his work. The remark the Advertiser printed in 1926 was thus the same quality that his contemporaries chose to remember: an engineer-administrator who set the work in motion and then let officials carry it out.
Western Hunan in the first months of the Northern Expedition
The missionaries were seized in a province that had just changed hands. The Kuomintang's Northern Expedition against the warlords formally began on 9 July 1926, and Nationalist forces advanced from Guangdong into Wu Peifu's Hunan, capturing the provincial capital, Changsha, on 11 July. With the capture of the Yangtze port of Yuezhou on 22 August, Hunan came under complete Kuomintang control. The capture at Miliwan at the end of September therefore came only weeks after this change of regime. The Peking dispatch calls the captors simply bandits and names no group. Western Hunan remained dangerous for foreign missions in the following months: in May 1927 an American diplomatic telegram reported that American Catholic missions at Shenchow and other cities in western Hunan had been looted and burned, and that the priests had been forced to flee.
Who carried out the Elizabeth mail robbery
Later accounts name the leader of the Elizabeth holdup as the armed robber James 'Killer' Cunniffe. According to these accounts, on 14 October 1926 he and seven accomplices armed with submachine guns hijacked a US mail truck and escaped with about $161,000 in cash and securities. The Advertiser's first-day figures differ a little: it estimated the gang at ten or more men from bystanders' counts in two cars, and it put the currency at $160,000 within a haul of unknown total value. Its description of '.45 calibre guns' that fired 15 bullets from one pull of the trigger matches the later references to submachine guns. Cunniffe did not survive the year: weeks after the robbery he was shot dead in Highland Park, Michigan, by a fellow gang member.
Why the robbery put Marines on the mail routes
The Elizabeth robbery drew an unusual federal response. In October 1926, after cabinet meetings, President Coolidge ordered US Marines to escort mail shipments and guard postal facilities. The Marine guards were armed with Thompson submachine guns and other military weapons to deter further attacks. The rapid-fire weapons that, in the Advertiser's account, terrorized Elizabeth's business district were thus answered by putting automatic weapons in the hands of the men sent to protect the mails.
Original
MAYOR AGREES TO STAND FOR RE-ELECTION
[?] manner of conducting public business throughout the past year guarantees a second term of office. A large deputation waited upon the mayor at his office. They begged him to reconsider his decision to retire as announced in The Advertiser two months ago. They presented him with the petition bearing names of 1, 500 representative citizens, and expressed their readiness to support him in every way possible if he fayored them with his decision to be a mayoralty candidate in December. Reconsiders. " I have reconsidered my decision and will allow my name to stand for nomination after listening to the deputation on behalf of the people who signed this petition, " the mayor announced today. " I wish to express my appreciation for the co-operation given me by the members of the council throughout the year, and also for the advice and support offered by all other boards in the business of the year. " It has always been my principle to leave the management of the several departments of the City Hall under the department ehads, and I have always
3 Missionaries Are Liberated
3 Missionaries Are Liberated. Peking, Oct. 14. - Three United States missionaries captured by bandits at Miliwan, Western Hunan Province, at the end of September, were released Monday after having been detained 18 days. No ransom was paid for their release. They are Miss Minerva Weil and Karl H. Beck of the Reformed Mission and Miss Lydia Koebbe of the Evangelical Mission.
Loot Mail of $160,000, Kill Guard
[?] other men, John Quinn, also a postal employee, was wounded, and Motorcycle Patrolman Chrystman, who was escorting the truck was knocked from his machine when one of the bandits ' cars collided with him. He was shot as he lay on the ground. The bandits got away. It is believed there were ten or more in the party. Four were counted in a green touring car. There were at least six other in a sedan, according to bystanders. The bandits fled toward Newark. They escaped with an unknown amount of loot, which inluded $ 160, 000 in currency, being transported to the Elizabethport Trust Company, payrolls of the Singer Manufacturing Company, and other registered mail. The business district was in a state of terror as the bandits covered the streets with bullets. A rain of bullets was poured into the victims from rapidfire. 45 calibre guns, discharging 15 bullets consecutively from one pull of the trigger. The bandits drove one of their cars back and forth over Enz ' body several times during the transfer of the mail sacks.
Source: Holding institution