Evening Star Newspaper, September 21, 1930, Page 90

8 Burning ot Treasury Building Accusations Were Made in Connection With T hat Fire Much Interest Was Aroused by Great Treasury Robbery of 1875. Detective Miller, Whose Able Work Brought to 1Trial Three Men Charged With Of fense. ' BY JOHN CLAGETT PROCTOR HE recent burning of Tempo Building, No. 4, by which the Federal Trade Commission and two Labor Depart- men bureaus were robbed of their quarters, reminds the writer that so far no one has been accused of setting fire to the structure for the purpose of destroying pub- lic documents. In th~ early days of the city this accusation was generally made when a fire eccurred in a Government building, and some- times it was really true. When the War Office burned on the evening of November 8. 1800, and when fire broke out in the Treasury Office on January 20, 1801, a newspaper published here for a brief while, called the Cabinet, charged that the Federalists were responsible for setting fire to the building as a part of a scheme to destroy the records and thus get out of the way the evidence of misgovernment and misappropriation. In connection with the Treasury fire of 1801, even the former Secretary, Oliver Wolcott, -whose resignation was not a month old when the fire occurred, was suspected of complicity in the burning of the building by his political ‘enemies, just because he happened to be at the fire and rendered patrictic service in superin- tending the carting away of boxes of valuable papers from the building. So it was every time a public building burned. Immediately it was .suggested that it was set on fire just to destroy _evidence of malfeasance in office, which rarely _was the case. However, the burning of the Treasury De- partment Building on March 31, 1833, which at first was considered accidental, was later actu- ally proven to have been the work of two brothers, Richard H. and Henry White, who, it appears, were hired for the purpose to destroy ‘evidence in a fraudulent pension claim on file in the old Treasury, which for many years stood on Fifteenth street northwest just about oppo- site F street. A HUNDRED years and more ago the news- papers rarely printed extended accounts of such “minor” incidents as the burning of a public building, some appalling marine disaster, or perhaps an earthquake in which several thousand people were killed, rather preferring to give a page or two of some Senator’s dry speech, or what some public man thought of the political situation in Squash Center (as Mr. -Berryman would say), and generally the type of news that no one today would consider as front-page matter. In this particular case, however, a mistake must have been made, for this fire was covered in elaborate style, and the National Intelligencer of April 1, 1833, tells us, in part: “We are sorry to have to announce that the public building east of the President’s Square occupied by the Treasury Department was con- .sumed by fire yesterday morning between 2 .o’clock and sunrise. The fire was first discovered in the room adjoining that of the chief clerk of the department, usually known among the clerks and other officers by the name of Mr. F. Laub’s room. It is not known whether the fire originated in the floor or the ceiling of the room, the whole being in a blaze before any one approached it, but no doubt appears to be enter- tained that the fire was accidental. The whole rocum was on fire before the alarm was given, and until the alarm was given even the watch, walking the pavement in front of the Branch Bank (near the spot), perceived nothing of the fire (the building of the State Department in- terpesing). Every exertion was made, as the people gathered to the spot, finding that it would be in vain to attempt saving the building, to rescue the bopks and papers of the several offices. A great deal was saved by the clerks and other citizens, considering the circum- stances. It is hoped, indeed, that few books or papers of much consequence are destroyed. “All the books and papers on the ground floor are believed to have been saved (in great dis- order, of course), and all those in the third story were destroyed. Of the books and papers in the apartments of the second foor much the greater part were saved.” Indeed, much more of a write-up was given than we here find necessary to quote, since the White brothers are entitled to some attention. It was not long after the fire before the opinion of the public officials was changed re- garding the cause of the disaster, and the two firebrands apprehended and brought to Wash- ington for trial. And here, again, the Intelli- gener comes to our assistance by giving notes on the trial, in which Prancis Scott Key and J. R. Key were counsel for the prosecution and .W. L. Brent and R. J. Brent appeared for the defendants. ON January 5, 1837, the case against Richard D H. White came on for trial, the jury being made up of Joseph Harbough, Benjamin Burns, John G. Robinson, S8amuel Chew, John Pick- erell, G. C. Grammer, George Marberry, Rezin Arnold, Peter Little, John Donn, Samuel Robin- son and Abner H. Young. The Intelligencer of January 7 states: “Yesterday was expected to come on in our Circuit Court, still setting, the trial of Henry White (brother of Richard H. White, already once tried) upon an indictment for burning the Treacury Building in the City of Washington in the Spring of the year 1833. Upon the mction of the district attorney, however, Rich- ard H. White was again arraigned for trial (the jury not having agreed upon his former trial). Much difficulty was experienced in getting a jury, in consequence of persons summoned as jurors having made up their minds on the case.” In the address to the jury the counsel for the Government said he expected to show: “First, that the Treasury Building was burnt, and in that building there was a great number of papers relating to pensions, which papers were fraudulent and forged. “Second, that these papers, which it was an object to destroy, were not destroyed, but es- caped in a very surprising manner, the wrong room being fired. “Third, the disclosures made proved that the prisoner adverted to the above escape of the papers; that he confessed not to have fully accomplished his object through some misman- agement, and in consequence of this he did not receive the full amount of compensation. “Fourth, it would appear that the fact of this failure could” not have been known to the witness, and therefore the peculiar circum- stance of the ecscape of the fraudulent papers in the fire at Washington went to corroborate the evidence given by a witness at a distant place who could not have known any of the particulars of the fire. “Fifth, it would next be given in evidence that the Winter preceding the fire ghe prisoner, White, came to Washington, where he remained all the Winter without any business, ahd that on the evening of the fire he and his brother went to a boarding house, having packed up their furniture, and sent it away, and that they went out from the boarding house at 8 or 9 o'clock in a gig. “Sixth, it would be shown that the causes they assigned for leaving the boarding house and going to Baltimore were contradicted by THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, SEPTEMBER 21, 1930. i 1833 Building (in center) at 1203 Pennsylvania avenue, where W. H. Ouman con- ducted a saloon in 1875. a verdict of “guilty” secured. A resume of the trial printed at the time tells us: “The trial of the prisoner came up on Thurs- day, the 12th instant, immediately after the trial of his brother, and while the jury in that case were still deliberating upon their verdict. The prisoner, Harry White, who has already gained some notoriety by the singular and almost amusing testimony which he was ad- mitted to give on his brother’s trial, sat in a chair immediately behind his counsel, Mr. Brent, apparently well prepared, with spec- tacles on his nose, to brave the ordeal which it was now his turn to undergo. He is a plain, farmer-looking man, apparently about 38 or 40 years old, having an appearance of grester rusticity and more simplicity than his brother, Richard. Indeed, neither of the brothers, from their appearance, would be taken for desperate or abandoned characters, ready to undertake any crime, however atrocious. Richard would be taken for a keen fellow, with all the appear- The Treasury Building as it appeared in 1833, when it was set on fire by the W hite brothers. the facts, and were not proved to have existed. “Seventh, it would be shown that when he and his brother went in the gig his wife was left behind to receive money; the excuse given for her stay would be falsified by the evidence; it would be proved that the money she said she stayed for was all paid to her husband on the Saturday preceding before he left Wash- ington.” Ammmmwymmmm following verdict: “We, the jury, are of opinion that the offense as charged was committed by the prisoner, but find him not guilty upon the plea of limita- tions, more than two years having elapsed from the committing of the offense to the finding of the indictment.” This verdict was set aside by the court and & new trial ordered, and in the meantime the case against Henry White was put on trial and ence of a gentleman in good circumstances and well versed in the ways of the world, while Harry might pass for a plain, unsophisticated “husbandman.” Richard White, the first of the brothers to be tried for this crime, was tried four times altogether, but each time successfully used as a bar to conviction the statute of limitations, and it is quite likely that Henry ultimately also went free. In the story recently printed in these columns in connection with block 291, between Twelfth and Thirteenth streets and Pennsylvania avenue and E streets northwest, reference was made to a notable robbery that at the time was said to have had its setting in Ottman’s saloon, that stood for some years at 1203 Pennsylvania ave- nue northwest. Here, again, the Treasury De- partment was involved, through the dishonesty of one of its employes, who, like ever s0 many The saloon was later owned by David Hagerty. people before and after that time, have failed to resist the sudden impulse to get rich quick, and in consequence are later given abundance of time to refiect and repent. In this particular robbery, which occurred on June 2, 1875, the alleged principal participants were Benjamin B. Halleck, a clerk in the Treas- ury; W. H. Ottman, saloonkeeper at 1203 Penn- sylvania avenue, and Theodore W. Brown. BRIEF outline of the facts, as reported by the Treasurer of the United States at the time and which many an old-timer will recall, states: “On the above-named day” (June 2, 1875) “at about 2:30 p.m., while the packages of new money remitted to banks and others in return for mutilated notes redeemed were being checked off for delivery to the Adams Express Co., it was discovered that there was missing a package of $47,097.65, intended for the National Park Bank of New York City. Immediate and thorough search for the package being made without success, notice was at once given to the Acting Secretary of the Treasury, who placed the matter in the hands of the Secret Service Division of the Treasury Department for inves= tigation, which was immediately commenced and prosecuted, it is believed, with commend- able activity. “The package in question, it appeared, had been put up among the earliest of those ine tended for remittance on that day, and after having been sealed and addressed was placed with cther packages prepared for delivery, and was not missed until delivery was being made to the express company, as above stated, in the .room immediately below the cash room of this office. This package consisted mainly of $500 legal tender notes, viz.: 94 of $500 each and notes and currency of smaller denominations to make up th eamount of $47,097.65. The $500 notes, although clean and apparently such as had not been used were, in fact, notes that had been out and returned to the office, but had not been destroyed for the reason that they were in good condition and were used because at that time there was a scarcity of new notes of the large denominations. They did not, therefore, run in regular sequence of numbers, as would have been the case had the package been made up of notes from original packages. “IT was not believed by my predecessor in this office that any person not employed in the room where this money was put up could have obtained access to the place where these packages were kept during the day, and therefore that the theft must have been com- mitted by an employe in the room, and probably by one of several whose duties were in immedi- ate connection with these packages, and possi- bly by one who knew the fact that the notes in this package were not in regular order of numbers, and therefore could not be so readily traced. But no clue as to the guilty party was obtained by this office until early in August, when notice was received from the superintend- ent of police of the City of Washington that a resident of this city had been reported as being in possession of and as having passed under suspicious circumstances a number of $500 notes at Saratoga, N. Y. “The clue thus found was followed up, and resulted in the arrest within a few days there=- after of one Brown and of W. H. Ottman, from whom, it was alleged, Brown had received the notes, and of B. B. Halleck, & clerk in this