Bank Robbery - History

History

The first bank robbery in the United States is often claimed to have taken place at the Clay County Savings Association in Liberty, Missouri, on 13 February 1866 when several men believed to be members of the James-Younger Gang shot a 19-year-old student and escaped with $60,000. This is also claimed (including by the museum established at the bank where it happened) as the first bank robbery in daylight in peacetime, to distinguish it from robberies such as that from the banks at St Albans, Vermont more than a year earlier which were perpetrated by Confederate soldiers and which some historians consider to be not robberies proper but acts of war.

However, twenty-five months earlier, just before noon on 15 December 1863 a man walked into a bank in Middlesex County, Massachusetts and shot the 17-year-old bookkeeper and stole $3,000 in large bills and $2,000 in small bills. The directors of the bank offered a $6,000 reward for the arrest of the murderer.

An even earlier alleged bank robbery is known to have occurred, but details are few. According to The New York Times, the first bank robbery in United States history took place on 19 March 1831, when the City Bank of New York lost $245,000, but the exact method is not clear so it cannot be confirmed that this was a robbery and not a burglary.