THE THREAT OF THE BANK BANDIT

Evening Post, Issue 28, 1 August 1936, Page 27

THE THREAT OF THE BANK BANDIT

Effective measures to cope with the menace of the armed bank robber are called; for in a book dealing with -famous bank forgeries, robberies, and swindles, says the "Daily Telegraph." ■The "author'is Mr. Thurston Hopkins; the authority on banking, who has spent nearly forty years in a. London ■bank/

■ He estimates that during the last five 'years the English banks have lost sums totalling £50,000 to' "stick 'em up" men, and recalls that during that .period several cashiers have been shot dead.

- ;Tlie banks, he declares, will continue to lose money and lives, for the world is more dangerous today than it- was tweuty years ago. The men who now come to rob a bank are "unyielding, fearless, and cruel murderers at heart."

• Mr. Hopkins pays credit to the manner, .in. which Scotland Yard has combated the menace of the modern bank robber. But he criticises bank officials lornot having moved with the times and provided protective devices in bank interiors.

■ •'. "Every bank bandit," he says, "knows that if he cares to walk into a bank with a gun he can have the cash for the mere taking of it. The cashier stands ■behind 'pseudo-brass rails, two inches apart and two feet high, and he does notstanda ghost of a chance if 'some ruffian pokes a gun through his-bars. v "The" pseudo-brass rails protect the bandit, not the cashier The grille prevents; the'cashier from escaping or from grappling with the assailant. ; ;

~;;<?The brass rails in our banks are just about as antiquated as quill pens and blunderbusses. They were:introduced at; a tiirie when these implements were in •'general use. - '

"The 'stick 'em up' man simply laughs at our counter grilles. I have records of over twelve bank raids dur:hg which gunmen have fired through ■the bars, and afterwards vaulted over

them. It is about time the chiefs of the great banks made the stunt of poking a gun in the.face of a cashier and demanding money or your life a much more perilous business than it is today." ,

To frustrate the armed bandits is, Mr. Hopkins declares, merely a matter of suitable equipment in lonely and out-of-the-way banks. The grille, he suggests, should be made of close-mesh steel with narrow openings and eyeholes through which the cashier can conduct his business.

The mesh would be close enough to prevent an armed bandit from taking aim or sticking his gun through it. Doors leading into the department should be massive and ■ self-locking. Foot-pedals controlling the lock on the front door of a bank would be a considerable help.

Mr. Hopkins tells us that the public has little idea of the persistence and ingenuity with which the passers of forged bank-notes pursue their offensive on the great London banks.

No practitioner has been more assiduous in developing his technique than tHe forger, and side by side with his advance the authorities have advanced to check and defeat him.

, "I have seen the art of forgery," writes Mr. Hopkins, "reach such a degree of perfection that it has at times been almost impossible to tell a forged note or cheque from a genuine one. I have seen the investigation of' forgery and other swindles become more highly organised every day, till at the present, time the ultra-violet ray will reveal with ,the utmost certainty the fraudulen manipulaion of a cheque."

The maker of forged notes usually sets up his printing presses in some country^ far from the prying eyes of Scotland Yard. Nearly air the forged notes in circulation in Europe are made in France, Russia, or the United States; -■'■'■'• ''■'. -■ '■■':: : -■-•■■ ■'-.:■:}.■■■' ::-