The Great Candy Drummer Caper

It was a crime alright.  It wasn’t a crime that would send a man convicted of the deed to the gallows, but it was a crime – a robbery declared by the Austin Statesman to be “one of the boldest to be committed in this city in some time.”[1]   The year was 1906, heyday in an era of Austin’s historical timeline when gunplay was not an uncommon way of settling disputes.  Accustomed to such sensational outcomes, editors for the Statesman knew how to write an eye-catching headline for this caper:

Bold Robbery May Result in Death of a Man.  Prisoner Accused of Theft of Diamond Stud Leaps from a Train into Shoal Creek

On March 22 at approximately eight o’clock in the evening, James Ellison rose from his seat on the No. 1 southbound train as it pulled into Austin and walked to the end of the passenger car he was riding and waited to get off at the International & Great Northern Railroad depot located on 3^rd Street.  He was hungry and wanted to catch a meal. 

Known in the trade as a “candy drummer,” Ellison earned his living as a traveling salesman for a candy manufacturing company who was making his way from a sales call in Taylor to the company’s headquarters in San Antonio.  During the train’s layover, Ellison had his choice of dining at any number of restaurants, hotels, bars, or saloons that did a lively dining business drawn by people coming and going at the depot.

Ellison stood patiently on the platform of his passenger car as the train slowly passed over a timber trestle that carried tracks across Shoal Creek into downtown.  He must have been nattily dressed – he wore a dapper diamond stud that graced his attire in splendid fashion.  Valued in 1906 money at $500, the jewelry was too tantalizing to resist by thieves who wanted it as much as he was proud to wear it.  Ellison was joined on the vestibule by three men unknown to him who crowded him uncomfortably, one man in front to distract and two behind to rob.  With dawning realization of what was happening, Ellison reached for the place he wore the stud and was horrified to find it gone.  One of the perpetrators had unpinned Ellison’s diamond with clever sleight of hand and hid it out of sight.

Wise to the theft, Ellison hailed a conductor and charged the three strangers with robbery.  A scuffle broke out.  Two of the alleged thieves safely made their escape, while the third leaped from the steps of the railroad car only to find himself plummeting thirty feet down into the streambed of Shoal Creek.  Police shortly afterwards found his limp body prostrated on jagged rocks below.  Despite injuries that rendered the culprit incapable of much movement, Austin’s finest hauled him to jail in a paddy wagon.

Ellison identified the deliriously semi-unconscious man as the leader of the gang who “nipped the stone.”  He was John Moon, reported to be from Kansas City.  A blond-haired man of medium size about the age of thirty, Moon was clean shaven and neatly dressed in a new suit with patent leather shoes.  He topped it all off with a derby hat.  Carrying sixteen dollars in folding money and two dollars in coin, Moon was not a penniless traveler – he did not fit the profile of a mugger.  In the inside pocket of his jacket was a photograph of a beautiful woman.

When Moon was alert enough to talk, police asked him who the woman was, who his accomplices were, and who had the diamond stud.  Apparently afflicted with a case of amnesia – Moon said nothing.  Discovering a train ticket to Houston in another pocket, police theorized Moon and his fellow thieves were on their way to the Bayou City when they encountered the unwary Mr. Ellison.  The Chief of Police dispatched two of his officers to the Houston & Texas Central Railway depot with hopes of apprehending the bandits before they made their getaway.  Unable to bring the suspects into custody, police theorized the injured thief’s two associates had successfully fled to Houston.

As Moon slowly recovered from his injuries, he vigorously asserted his innocence.  He claimed to be innocently standing on the platform of the car when he was pushed off the train into the creek.  He denied knowing the other two men.  Nevertheless, Moon remained in jail with bail set at $482 more than he could pay.  Meanwhile, Ellison went on to San Antonio without his property.[2]  Police accepted the evolving conclusion that Moon’s accomplices had the diamond somewhere with them in Houston.  The trail went cold. 

While not a historic event itself, the incident illustrates how new cultural influences were introduced into Austin when railroads brought people into the city from all over, even petty criminals.  A major point of consideration for the evolution of frontier towns, as Austin was in its early days, was that population made a difference.  A larger populace made it possible for cities to provide urban amenities that pushed society along to a greater level of complexity and attraction.  Railroads influenced municipal planning, architecture, investment, and ideas on labor, technology, and business.  Time moved faster and access to information quickened.[3]  Images of locomotives rumbling down Austin’s downtown streets demonstrated that something new was happening.  Life became faster, more precise, more complex, and more complicated.

In 1870, the year before the first train came to town, Austin’s population was 4,428.  In 1910, four years after Moon and his pals allegedly pilfered Ellison’s diamond stud, the population jumped to 29,860, an increase that calculates to a little over 574% in only forty years.[4]        

Everything changed when railroads came to town.  Trains rolled into Austin as part of a national transportation system no longer confined to watercourses, wagons, stagecoach, or horseback.  They carried carloads of people and boxcars of goods that knitted communities together as settlement spread from east to west.[5]  Railroads ushered Austin into a new era as the city rolled into a gilded age on the steel wheels of a train.

After months behind bars, Moon sought his release by filing a writ of habeas corpus asserting he was “illegally restrained from his liberty.”  He said local authorities had “no evidence to connect him in any manner with the alleged robbery.”[6]  Likely true – all police had to go on was Ellison’s eyewitness testimony.  Even so, the court denied his request and remanded him to the watchful custody of the Travis County Sheriff until he could pay the court’s required bond of $500.[7]  A month later, it was recorded the 53^rd District Court remanded the defendant to jail.[8]  

The diamond stud was never seen again.

Endnotes

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[1] Austin Statesman.  “Bold robbery may result in death of man; prisoner accused of theft of diamond stud leaps from a train into Shoal Creek.”  23 March 1906.  p.2.

[2] Ibid.  “Man who jumped from train will recover:  Another arrest made in connection with the daring robbery, but suspect is released.”  24 March 1906.  p.8.

[3] McComb, David G.  The City in Texas.  Austin: University of Texas Press.  2015.  p. 144 – 146.

[4] U.S. Census and the City of Austin.

https://www.austintexas.gov/sites/default/files/files/Planning/Demographics/population_history_pub.pdf  (accessed 09 February 2020).

[5] Austin Steam Train Association.  Placard hanging on the wall in its historical museum.  Cedar Park, Texas.  Observed 25 October 2018.

[6] Statesman.  “Moon sees sunshine: Man charged with sensational diamond robbery hopes to gain liberty by habeas corpus hearing glympse (sic) of the light.  22 July 1906.  p.8.

[7] Travis County Criminal District Court.  Minutes.  Case #15248.  21 August 1906.

[8] Travis County 53rd District Court.  Sheriff’s fee book.  Case #15248.  September 1906.