Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 28, No. 3, November 12, 1927

“Old Bill” Miner by Frank Price

The story of one of the west’s oldest bad men and the one to originate that famous cry “Hands up!” is told here briefly.

An examination of the records of American outlawry since the first of the desperadoes swung into action against organized society reveals no more picturesque bad man than was “Old Bill” Miner, road agent and train robber, whose proudest boast when he lay on his death bed was that he had never knowingly killed a man.

Here was the story book bandit done to real life. Starting in life with all the advantages a boy could desire, going bad in early youth and staying that way until the end, Old Bill established a reputation for courtesy and meticulous attention to his personal appearance that was eclipsed only by his almost unfailing success in getting money the easiest way.

It was a discussion between two veteran detectives that inspired the writer to sally forth in search of information about Old Bill. They recounted some of his exploits but frankly confessed they had lost sight of him while he still was a comparatively young man.

“I can tell you this, though,” one said. “Miner was the first outlaw to give the command ‘Hands up!’ That was in his early days out in the gold fields, and believe me, son, when he barked this suggestion it was followed without argument.”

This was interesting! Who among all of us had not at one time or another speculated on this phase of banditry? True, the formula has been revised, amended and parodied in various ways — such as “Stick ’em up!” “Reach high!” and “H’ist ’em!” — but the general thought underlying each of these commands is the same. It is “Hands up!” and the reason is obvious. It renders signally impotent the real owner of such hands.

So Old Bill was the first outlaw to reason thus. That being true, then, his record must be worth recounting, and I leave it to the reader to judge of that.

My informant is a veteran of the Secret Service who knew Miner personally and who was with him just a few months before his death. Let him tell of this rarity among bad men.

“Miner,” he says, “was not Miner at all. His name was William Anderson, and he was the promising son of a prominent Kentucky banker. When the gold rush of ’49 was on, this youth joined the thousands of others who made the long trek overland to the California hills.

“No one ever discovered what it was that made him go bad. The theory has been advanced that he was perfectly honest when he reached the West Coast and that after repeated failure at prospecting, he decided to find his gold in a different way — to steal it after others had mined it.

“At any rate, whatever the motivation, he prospered, until one day in 1869 he selected the wrong stage to stick up. A guard beat him in an exchange and he was trussed up and delivered to the sheriff. A term in San Quentin followed.

“He was released in 1879 and almost before the ink was dry on his parole he had swung into action again as a road agent.

“Miner joined up with a gang and attacked the Del Norte stage in Colorado. The booty was three thousand, six hundred dollars and, although one of Old Bill’s pals was captured and hanged by Vigilantes, the Kentuckian escaped with the loot.

“He made directly for Chicago and after a short time there, posing as a California capitalist, he visited in Michigan. He was waiting for the excitement of the Del Norte robbery to die down.

“After a fairly successful series of stagecoach holdups in Colorado, when he had returned there a few months later, he again invaded California and enlisted with a band which included Jim Crum, Bill Miller and a third man named Jones.

“This gang stopped a stage between Sonora and Milton in 1881, and in the melee which followed, Jones was the only one to escape. Crum later confessed and got a twelve-year term, while Miner and Miller, because of their obstinacy, were given twenty-five-year sentences.

“On June 17, 1901, Miner was released from San Quentin. He must have been at least sixty years old then and the authorities were convinced that he would give them no more trouble as a bandit.

“But they were optimists. Just about two years later, on September 23, 1903, with two companions, he held up and robbed the Oregon Railway and Navigation passenger train No. 6, at Mile Post 21, near Corbett, Oregon.

“One of Bill’s companions was badly wounded on this job and the other was picked up later and sent away for a long prison term. Miner, for whom a reward of one thousand, five hundred dollars had been offered, escaped.

“Less than a year later, on September 10, 1904, Miner, then perhaps sixty-three years old and possibly older, became a lone bandit and held up the Canadian Pacific Railroad’s Trancontinental Express at Mission Junction, British Columbia.

“This raid netted him ten thousand dollars in gold dust and currency and for the first time he earned the high but questionable honor of having a worth while price put on his head.

“The Canadian Government and the Dominion Express Company each offered a reward of five thousand dollars for his apprehension and the Province of British Columbia appropriated one thousand, five hundred dollars to the same worthy purpose.

“It is assumed that Old Bill took the proceeds of this job back to the States with him and lived comfortably for more than a year and a half, for he was not heard from again until May 9, 1906, when he and two others again attacked a Canadian Pacific train, this time at Furrer, British Columbia. This job was unproductive, however.

“He had compelled the engineer of the train to uncouple the locomotive and mail car and run them to a point a mile away, where he went through the registered post. It is believed that he expected to find a valuable registered package and when this failed to materialize he lost his nerve and escaped, temporarily.

“Miner was out of luck now. He had wished the Northwest Mounted Police on his trail, and on May 14, five days later, the chase ended in a pitched battle.

“Miner and his two companions — Louis Colquhoun and Thomas Dunn — were captured after they had seriously wounded one of the ‘Mounties.’ All three were sentenced to life imprisonment and placed in the New Westminster jail, near Vancouver, British Columbia.”

Here the Secret Service veteran’s narrative was interrupted for several moments, as he sat staring dreamingly into space.

“I’m not through the story of Miner yet,” he apologized. “I was just wondering how famous such a man would become if we could harness his cunning and courage and have him go straight.”

I ventured a question.

“Why,” I queried, “was Miner so smart and brave?”

The veteran smiled.

“You haven’t heard anything yet,” he replied. “Listen to this.” He proceeded.

“Miner must have a constitutional objection to prison bars by this time, because it was only a little more than a year after receiving the life sentence that he engineered one of the most sanguinary jailbreaks in Canada’s history.

“With five other convicts he made a dash for freedom on August 8, 1907. Three of his co-conspirators were shot and killed by guards. Miner’s luck had returned. He got away without a scratch.

“The next place in which Old Bill was seen was Chicago. He apparently had retrieved a cache up in Canada, because he had money when he hit the Middle West and, posing as a coast capitalist again, he almost married a wealthy woman to whom he paid ardent court despite his years.

“His funds exhausted, Old Bill now turned to new fields for his outlawry and selected far-off Georgia. Again he was working alone.”

The Secret Service man smiled as I gasped.

“Sure,” he nodded understandingly, “I know he was a pretty old man for such a thing, but he did it. The records prove it.

“He held up a Southern Railway express and robbed it of twenty thousand dollars and he must have been all of seventy years old by that time. But he was not as fast on the getaway as he had been and he was captured later and sent to prison.

“In 1912, when Miner was about seventy-one, he was in the Milledgeville prison camp, Georgia, and I was assigned to go down there after a prisoner who was to be given over to the custody of the Government. When I arrived the warden greeted me.

“ ‘You’re a little late,’ he said, ‘your man escaped last night.’

“I asked for the details. My prisoner and an expreacher serving a minor sentence had been influenced by a desperate convict to join him in a jail break.

“ ‘Who was this desperate man who coaxed them to go?” I asked the warden.

“ ‘Old Bill Miner,’ he said, ‘a hard-boiled bandit.’

“I was-astounded. It was unbelievable that Old Bill would take such a long chance at his age! But he had and he was to regret it.

“My man escaped but Miner and the ex-parson were picked up four days later in the Oconee swamps. They were half-starved and suffering from exposure.

“Miner died as the result of this experience, but not until a year later. His vitality was amazing. I talked with him just before he passed out. He told me then of his career, and it was then that he boasted that he had never knowingly killed any person.

“So passed Old Bill Miner, first outlaw to command ‘Hands up!’ first road agent to affect the long black coat, black boots and black sombrero and first to affect the flowing black mustache. Even now, as he lay dying, the mustache was there, but it was snow-white and scraggly.”

And when my friend of the Secret Service finished his recital, I felt, despite a desire not to, a sort of sympathy for this pathetic old man who found it necessary to stick up a train single-handed after he had turned seventy.