The first American bank heist takes place at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia - September 2nd, 1798

On this day in 1798, over $160,000 was stolen from the Bank of Pennsylvania at Carpenters’ Hall, marking the first recorded bank heist in American history.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show that talies the gains and losses of everyday history.
I'm Gabe Lousier, and in this episode we're talking about

(00:23):
a true crime farce from the early days of American history,
the time when a wrongfully accused man was able to
reclaim is good name thanks to a comical misstep by
a not quite criminal mastermind. The day was September two.

(00:47):
Over one hundred and sixty thousand dollars was stolen from
the Bank of Pennsylvania at Carpenter's Hall, marking the first
recorded bank heist in American history. The theft heard early
that morning and had all the tell tale signs of
an inside job. There was no evidence of fourced entry,

(01:07):
not on the doors of the building nor on the
vault itself. That technically made the crime of burglary rather
than a robbery, as the latter involves the uths or
threat of force and intimidation, whereas a burglary is merely
theft by unlawful entry. But whatever you call it, the
crime was a big deal. After all, nothing like it

(01:30):
had ever happened in the country before. Carpenter's Hall was
constructed in seventeen seventy by the Carpenter's Company, the oldest
craft guild in the United States. In seventeen seventy four,
the building served as the meeting place for the First
Continental Congress, and it was later home to the Philadelphia Library,

(01:51):
as well as the First and Second Banks of the
United States. Banking institutions were especially attracted to the Hall
as its solid construction provided a safe place to operate
while they put up their own buildings. In seventeen, the
building's latest tenant was the Bank of Pennsylvania. In August

(02:11):
of that year, the bank was in the process of
moving in, but first it needed to make a few
changes to make the building more secure. First, and foremost,
the doors of the vault had to be upgraded, and
to do that the bank hired the services of a
local blacksmith named Patrick Leon. The twenty nine year old
Scottish born craftsman had emigrated from London five years earlier.

(02:36):
He worked as a journeyman until seventeen ninety seven, at
which point he established his own shop in Philadelphia, which
at the time was the nation's capital. Leon had been
hired by Samuel Robinson, the man in charge of overseeing
the bank's move into Carpenter's Hall. One day, the blacksmith
was hard at work on the new vault doors in

(02:58):
his shop when Robins and stopped by with a carpenter
whom Leon had never met before. According to a later
account by Leon, the stranger seemed to take a special
interest in the vaults locking system, but since he was
there as Robinson's guest, Leon said nothing of it. Besides,
he didn't have time to be suspicious. Philadelphia was in

(03:20):
the midst of a yellow fever epidemic, and Leon had
been on his way out of town when he received
the vault door rush job from the bank. More than
five thousand city residents had already contracted the disease that summer,
and nearly thirteen hundred of them would die from it.
Leon didn't want his name added to that list, so

(03:41):
he worked to complete the vault doors as fast as possible.
Shady visitors or not, Leon finished the job without being infected,
but the same couldn't be said for his nineteen year
old apprentice, Jamie. Once the blacksmith had delivered the doors
to the bank, he dragged his sick apprentice aboard a
ship and traveled to Lewistown, Delaware, in search of help. Unfortunately,

(04:05):
Jamie died two days after their arrival. Leon decided to
remain in Delaware for the time being until the wave
of sickness in Philadelphia had passed. While he was there,
he began hearing news of a break in at Carpenters Hall.
The papers reported that someone had slipped into the vault
and made off with a hundred and sixty two thousand,

(04:27):
eight hundred and twenty one dollars in cash and Spanish gold,
the equivalent of nearly four million dollars today. The theft
had taken place just two days after Leon's departure, a
fact that made him look awfully suspicious in the eyes
of Pennsylvania police. He soon discovered he was the prime

(04:47):
suspect and wanted for questioning. He hastily returned to Philadelphia
in the hope of clearing his name, But try as
he might, Leon couldn't get the police to believe his story.
They arrested him on the bought and threw him into
a twelve by four foot cell in the Walnut Street Jail.
To be fair, Leon was the most obvious suspect due

(05:09):
to his role in upgrading the vault doors and his
immediate flight from the city just before the heist, authorities
were convinced he had made himself a spare key and
then returned to the city under cover of night to
let himself into the bank. Even when Leone offered proof
that he hadn't returned to Philadelphia until after the robbery,

(05:30):
authorities maintained that he was still somehow involved. The timing,
they argued, was just too perfect to be coincidental. But
of course it was just a coincidence. The real culprit
turned out to be Isaac Davis, the stranger who had
visited Leon's shop in late August. Davis was a member

(05:52):
of the carpenter's company that owned the hall, and had
pulled off the heist with the aid of a bank
porter named Thomas Cunningham. An inside man in the most
literal sense, Cunningham had actually stayed inside the hall overnight
and then used his key to let Davis into the
vault when he arrived. The pair hadn't intended to frame

(06:14):
the blacksmith. That was just a happy accident, or happy
for them at least. Leon went on to spend the
next three months in police custody, desperately hoping not to
catch the yellow fever that was running rampant through the
jail house. Authorities had few other leads, so it's likely
that Leon would have stayed there even longer if not

(06:37):
for a gloriously stupid move on the part of Isaac Davis.
Within a few days of the theft, Thomas Cunningham had
himself died of yellow fever. That left the entirety of
the loot in the hands of Isaac Davis. He wasn't
sure what to do with such a large sum of money,
so he just started depositing it into several different Philadelphia banks,

(07:00):
including the very bank he had just ripped off. It
didn't take long for bank officials to realize that Davis
had suddenly come into quite a bit of money. In fact,
when the various banks conferred with each other, they found
the deposits added up almost exactly to the amount stolen.
On September two, when Davis was questioned about where he

(07:23):
had gotten so much money, he almost immediately admitted to
the crime. Soon after, the governor of Pennsylvania granted him
a full pardon in exchange for a full confession and
the return of all the money he'd stolen. Davis complied,
of course, and as a result, he didn't serve a
single day in prison. As for Patrick Leon, the man

(07:47):
who had nothing at all to do with the theft,
he remained in jail even after Davis's confession for three weeks.
The police continued to insist that Leon had supplied an
extra key to the bolt. Finally, with no evidence to
support their accusation and no jury willing to convict him,
the charges were dropped and at last Leon was released.

(08:11):
It's worth noting that two guards had been on duty
outside the bank on the night of the heist, and
they had also been jailed on suspicions. They too, were
eventually released, but it's astonishing that three men were imprisoned
indefinitely while the admitted criminal walked away scott free. Patrick
Leon tried to make the best of a bad situation

(08:34):
by writing a tell all book about the whole messy ordeal.
His first hand account has proven invaluable to historians, as
it's supplied much of the information we have about the
heist today. It also provided an unintended lesson on the
importance of brevity, as Leon gave his book a ridiculously
long title. It reads as follows the narrative of Patrick Leon,

(08:59):
who suffered three months severe imprisonment in Philadelphia jail on
merely a vague suspicion of being concerned and a robbery
of the Bank of Pennsylvania, with his remarks thereon quite
a mouthful, but in his defense he was a blacksmith
by trade, not a writer. Long winded title aside, Leon's

(09:21):
book actually helped him find justice in the end, as
it attracted the attention of several prominent lawyers. With their help,
Leon was able to sue the state in eighteen o
five for malicious prosecution and wrongful imprisonment. In the end,
the jury took his side and awarded him twelve thousand
dollars in damages. That ruling was appealed by the defense,

(09:44):
but was settled out of court with Leon for nine
thousand dollars before the second trial could begin. That reduced
award was still a very tidy sum in those days,
representing several years worth of wages for a tradesman. The
money allowed Leon to start at his own business, manufacturing
hand pumped fire engines. The venture proved quite successful, and

(10:06):
by all accounts, he was able to live the rest
of his life with all wants provided. He even managed
to avoid dying of yellow fever. Way to go, Pat,
I'm Gay, Bluesier and hopefully you now know a little
more about history today than you did yesterday. You can
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(10:29):
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and thanks to you for listening. I'll see you back
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