A Wedge, a Brace, and a Glasgow Letter: Burglars Crack Lowell Safe
Thieves drilled Meader & Buckley's store safe, taking post-office money and a $90 letter from Scotland, and a sheriff saw the hand of a serial safe-cracker.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
EVERETT, July 25.—Burglars drilled the safe in Meader & Buckley's store at Lowell last night and stole funds belonging to the post office and to the firm. The thieves took $1.30 in stamps, cash from the money-order funds, and one returned letter from Glasgow, Scotland, supposed to contain $90. Meader & Buckley also lost cash. The burglars left a wedge and a brace. Sheriff Hoyt thinks, from the appearance of the work, that the job was done by the same parties who robbed the safe on the Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern Railroad at Snohomish.
“The burglars left a wedge and a brace.”
In 1894, a small-town post office safe was often the only cash repository, making it a target. Sheriff Hoyt's hunch that the Lowell burglary matched a Snohomish job reads like early serial-crime linkage.
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