TRUE BELIVER

 

I  tell you, if you travel long enough down any philosophical path you always reach the land of ad nauseum. And, having reached this ever ever land one particular spiritual Puritan in Quaker garb,  Neal S. Dow - a five foot two inch Napoleon of Temperance, this two term Mayor of Portland, Maine, could never find his way back to sanity. Even the Rum Riot of 1855 failed to convince Mayor Dow that his own obsession had set the cause of sobriety in America back by a generation..

The first time Neal Dow (above) was elected Mayor was in April of 1851. He had been carried into office by his support of the new “Maine Law”, which made the sale of alcohol in the state illegal, except for medicinal and industrial uses. Wrote Neal, “Portland wharves groaned beneath the burden of West India rum.” Eighteen other states quickly followed Maine's moralistic lead. But as in all the other states, the new law was popular in Calvinist Maine only so long as it was easily avoided.

The most famous bootlegger became “Handsome Jim” James McGlinchy, who along with his three brothers, operated the Casco Brewery, after the original name for Portland. It and a few distilleries survived the Maine Law because, officially, they exported all of their product. But a good part of all that rum seeped back into Maine. 

Such leaks in his prohibition boat infuriated Mayor Dow (above), who was also president of the Temperance League. And after raids of every Irish “grog shop” in Portland failed to plug the local traffic in the demon rum, the Mayor insisted on searching all trains, boats and wagons entering the city. Since Portland was the primary rail and sea connection with Canada, the delays this created infuriated merchants up and down the eastern seaboard. Dow was even burned in effigy on Boston Common. And in April of 1852, when Mayor Dow came up for re-election, merchants from all over New England funded his opponent, Albion K. Parris. Mayor Dow lost re-election by 542 votes out of 3,300 cast.  That's a landslide.

Being a true believer (his maternal great-grandfather had the given name of “Hate-Evil”), the diminutive Mr. Dow could not believe the fault was his or his cause's . He was convinced he had been victimized by a conspiracy of merchants who provided fake I. D.s for the 2,200 Irish immigrants in Portland who had brought to America their strange Catholic religion and their vulgar sinful ways. Even worse, they almost all voted Democratic. Still at least the new Mayor Parris was also a temperance man, if not quite as enthusiastic an enforcer of the Maine law.  

So “The Grand Pooh-bah of temperance” as the Irish nick-named him, retreated to his mansion at 714 Congress Street (above), to lick his wounds, and plan his comeback.

Under the theory that the only problem with his temperance law was that it was too weak, in 1853 Dow lobbied the state legislature in Augusta to doubled down. The new sterner temperance law they passed allowed a search warrant to be issued if three private citizens claimed liquor was present in an establishment. It also made the mere possession of alcohol proof of intention to sell. Thus every user was now a dealer. By now Dow was convinced the temperance movement was so strong...“The voters...will turn upon that point.” The little dictator even saw the growth of the Republican Party across the northern states not as primarily a condemnation of slavery, but as a rejection of alcohol.

In March of 1855 Maine passed two other pieces of legislation which Dow had come to see as essential for the eradication of liquor. First all immigrants must register and show their naturalization papers three months prior to election day. This disenfranchised hundreds of otherwise qualified voters for the approaching April elections, under the theory that what a local newspaper described as “Irish cattle” were also  “illegals” with false papers. The second law took care of most of the rest of Irish voter-wanna-be Americans. From now on, any voter rejected at the polls for whatever reason in Republican Maine, must appeal in Federal court. Cases here could take weeks just to get on the docket. The Democratic paper, the Eastern Argus put it best. “Dow...and company...have made up their minds to rule the state at all hazards.”

And they did. Dow was re-elected Mayor in April of 1855. But out of the 3,742 votes cast, Neal Dow's margin of victory was a mere 46 votes. Ignoring that sliming margin his close friend and political ally, Elder Peck, said it was “...a victory over Rum…Catholicism, and Corruption.” In his inaugural address, the zealot Mayor Dow warned, “I shall not fail... to employ all the power which the law has put into my hands.” He even suggested that his administration would “restrain the right of suffrage, now exercised by our foreign population...to prevent their overawing and controlling our elections, as they have done.” Mayor Dow had thrown down the gauntlet. And it would slap him right across the mouth.

As part of his new duties, Mayor Dow and the city council were supposed to jointly appoint a committee to pick a new liquor agent, whose job it would be to purchase liquor which would then be legally sold to the apothecaries and industries of the city. However Mayor Dow was so certain of his own nobility, he appointed himself to the selection committee, and to save even more time appointed himself the temporary liquor agent. As such he purchased $1,500 worth of alcohol (in his own name) and had it shipped to City Hall. Only after it arrived did he notify the city council. After all, who could question the morals of Mayor Dow?

The answer was the city council could. Their council members got into a shouting match with the Mayor over his actions. And one of them leaked details of the shipment to the Eastern Argus. On Saturday June 2, 1855 the paper printed up and posted handbills all over Portland, which laid out the facts, in particular that the liquor had been bought under the name of Neal Dow. The handbills then asked, “Where are our vigilant police... who think it their duty to...often push their search (of the poor man's cider) into private houses, contrary to every principle of just law? We call upon them by virtue of Neal Dow’s law to seize Neal Dow’s liquors and pour them into the street....Let the lash which Neal Dow has prepared for other backs be applied to his own when he deserves it.”

The timing could not have been worse for Mayor Dow. This was the four year anniversary of the original Maine Law. Three men found a judge who witnessed their testimony that there was illegal alcohol in City Hall, and he was thus required to issue a search warrant. A small crowd gathered at City Hall, mostly to see if the police were going to arrest Mayor Dow. They were not. But still the crowd stayed. 

As the day wore on, and the shifts at the locomotive plant and other factories let out, the crowd began to grow. By seven that evening there were 2,500 people milling around City Hall (above)), their anger fueled by what they saw as the hypocrisy of the biggest temperance man in the state having his own $1,500 stash of booze protected by the police. To avoid antagonizing the crowd the ten police officers locked themselves in the Liquor Room in City Hall, with the booze. Mayor Dow sent word to two “private” militia companies to come quick.

At least one member of the militia sensed the approaching disaster. But when Sargent William Winslip suggested the militia should load blanks, Mayor Dow responded, “We know what we are about sir. We’ve consulted the law, sir.” At that point Sargent Winslip dropped out of the militia. At ten that night one company of about twenty men, formed up in front of City Hall. Backed by armed troops, Mayor Dow ordered the crowd to disperse. The crowd responded with a hail of trash and garbage. Dow now ordered the troops to fire over the heads of the crowd. But their commander, Captain Green, said he needed more men. And for the only time that day Mayor Dow let a cooler head over-rule him.

It was a mistake. The sight of the twenty militia men retreating encouraged the crowd to surge forward. Rocks and bricks now replaced the garbage. One energetic fellow, a 22 year old sailor from Deer Isle named John Robbins, crawled through a broken window into the liquor room, unlocked the door, and the crowd stormed in.  At this moment the reinforced militia returned, and under Dow's command, opened fire. The uneven battle continued for twenty minutes. Only the fact the militia were armed with flintlock muskets prevented the death toll from being higher. John Robbins was killed, and seven others wounded. Eventually the crowd dispersed. To Republicans it was the Rum Riot. To Democrats it was the Portland Massacre.

Dow was charged with breaking the law he had helped pass, but he was acquitted after a one day trial for two reasons – first it was obvious the liquor was not really his, and second because the judge, Henry Carter, was a strong temperance man and a Dow supporter. Still, Mayor Dow learned nothing from the debacle. He immediately issued a “...Message on the Riot” which he blamed on un-named anti-temperance men, and claimed John Robbins was an Irish immigrant who was wanted by the law. But that charge fell apart when several witnesses under oath testified that John was a native American (i.e. born in America),  had never been arrested, was a mate on the barque Louisa Eaton and was a “steady, honest man, remarkable for his good nature and peaceable disposition.”  But whatever Robbins' disposition had been, it was suddenly clear the mob had been outraged at Mayor Dow's behavior and had not even been mostly Irish.

That fall the voters drove that point home by electing Democratic majorities to both houses of the state legislature, and the Governor's office, too. And quickly the Maine Law was overturned, ending Maine's five year experiment with prohibition. John Robbins was buried in the old Eastern Cemetery, with honors. Mayor Dow did not bother to even run for re-election. And even though prohibition was re-instated two years later, Neal Dow stayed out of that fight.

The new prohibition law was again rarely enforced. Thus it stayed on the books until the Federal government passed its own “noble experiment” in 1920. But long before then, in 1880, the bootlegger James McGlinchy had died, leaving behind an estate worth $200,000, marking him as one of the richest men in Portland., and proof that whatever people said in church, they were just people. 

As for the true believer Neal Dow (above),  he was lucky not to live long enough to see his dream produce what he feared most, the funding of organized crime, largely made up of foreign born and first generation immigrants (from lots of countries with different religions, but mostly Italian Catholics), who fed an increase in public drunkenness and alcohol addiction in response to the Great National Experiment in Prohibition. The Napoleon of Temperance died still blind to the truth of his folly in 1897 at the age of 93.

And if there is a lesson from the life of Neal Dow, it is that ad nausium is the land where all ideas, even good ones, go to die. Or, as Ben Franklin urged, "moderation in all things - including moderation".

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CRAZY MAN

 

I doubt Charles Addison Boutelle was legally insane, but when he was re-elected to his ninth term as a Republican Congressman he was confined to an asylum - even if the contentious old sailor's margin of victory was well below his usual level.  But sane or not, his whole life was a testament to the power of one crazy man in a world run by people who want to believe they are sane.

The dictatorial speaker of the House, Hoosier Joe Cannon, opined that Charles Boutelle (above), “Could get into more controversies in shorter time than any man I ever knew.” And Boutelle's own daughter, in praising her father, asserted, “He could always command attention. No one ever dozed or attended to their correspondence when he was speaking.”  Between those two quotes lies the shadow of a politician whose mouth (and pen) got him into a lot of trouble. And calling him “The handsomest man in the Congress”,  which he was well known as, seems the reverse to describing a woman as having a good personality.  So, I'm pretty sure that Charlie was indeed  loony, the kind of guy who drives friends and enemies absolutely nuts because he is so certain he is right and is so wrong.

The young Lt. Boutelle had led the Union naval charge into the Confederate stronghold of Mobile Bay, in August of 1864.  He came home to Bangor an official hero. After the war, first as editor and then from 1874 co-owner (along with his brother Edward) of the Bangor Daily Whig and Courier, Boutelle's dynamic and hyperbolic editorials made him a Republican power across New England. And his willingness to directly buy votes (there was no secret ballot, yet) built the Republican dominance of Maine over the post war generation.

Boutelle first threw his editorial support behind the ambitious and avaricious James Blaine (above, in shame), known accurately as “the continental liar from the state of Maine”. Mr. Boutelle attended the Republican convention in 1876, and in 1880 he was the national chairman of the Blaine Clubs. Blaine came within a handful of votes of being the Republican Presidential nominee both election cycles. Finally in 1884 Boutelle 's unwavering support paid off. He was named the state Party Chairman, and heading into the Presidential campaign that year, the Bangor editor was considered Blaine's “right hand man...and is even now talked of for a cabinet position”. But the nation was saved this turn of events when Blaine lost the election to Grover Cleveland by ½ of 1% of the popular vote

In the meantime, the “robustly-conservative” Boutelle had decided to run for congress himself, selling a mix of jingoism and empire building.  He lost his first attempt in September of 1880, by 855 votes. I guess he ran out of money.  But two years later he threw his growing fortune into his election for Maine's “at-large” seat in Congress, and in September of 1884 he won Maine's 4^th district seat, which he was to occupy for most of the rest of his life.

Boutelle was a supporter and friend of the legendary Speaker of the House, “Czar” Thomas Reed (above), also from Maine. Then in 1890, the New York Times observed election day in several small Maine towns, and noted that Reed had influenced the results with cash. “Boodle has elected him, operating directly in the purchase of votes and indirectly by discouraging the Democrats to such an extent as to keep hundreds of them away from the polls.” The story went on to say, “...the richest and most influential man in Wells, sat in the (city hall) with a pile of (dollar) bills in his lap and...in the presence of scores of people, exchanged money for votes for Reed...at least 300 votes (were) purchased in Biddeford”, a small town near the New Hampshire border, at up to $20 a vote." 

It was a smear, of course. No Republican needed to buy an election  in Maine.  But by the following Sunday, preachers in pulpits across Maine were lecturing on the need for a secret ballot, as was used in Australia. When in 1891 the Maine legislature seriously considered what was called "the Australia ballot", Reed and Boutelle sent a joint letter, warning that such procedures were too complicated for the average voter.  But they were swimming against the tide. Under the new system, in the September 1894,  Reed won re-election by 17,383 votes. But by September of 1898 his margin of victory had slipped to 12, 380. Change was on the wind, if still faint.

And it shifted most dramatically during the 1896 presidential campaign, when a surrogate speaker for the Democrat candidate William Jennings Bryant (above), visited Maine. He was Alexander Troop, editor of the Democratic leaning New Haven Connecticut Union newspaper. Well, Boutelle could not resist throwing some mud at his New England business rival, running an un-credited story that Troop had once been arrested for indecent exposure. The outraged Troop filed a libel suite, demanding a retraction. As the trial date approached, friends convinced the bull headed Boutelle to leave the negotiations up to his friend, Speaker Reed. Finding that Troop would not take a quiet payoff, Reed wrote out a retraction on the spot.  Boutelle responded by telegraph that he would be “damned” if he would print anything like that in his paper.  Even after Reed explained that without a retraction, it might not remain his paper for long,  Boutelle refused to budge. The arguments swung back and forth until Reed threatened to walk away from their friendship. Boutelle finally ate crow on the front page of his newspaper. But by then the Democrat Bryant had been beaten, and both Reed and Boutelle were safely re-elected by the usual wide margins.

Then, on the afternoon of Thursday, 21 December, 1899, Charles Boutelle was entertaining in the electrified Young's Hotel (above), on Court street, in the financial district of Boston. Charles had used the hotel for years as a lay over between his homes in Washington and Maine, and a place to make personal and political deals out of the public eye. But this afternoon, after an otherwise normal morning, Charles collapsed in the 100 foot long dining room. Rather than taking him upstairs to his suite, he was carried unconscious into a parlor.   Dr. F.W. Johnson, a well known surgeon, was sent for, but would only tell the press that Boutelle's condition was “serious, but not necessarily fatal”. Some considered that report optimistic. In fact Boutelle was delirious and ranting. Late that night Boutelle's brother Edward arrived from Bangor, and about midnight told the press Charles was suffering from “congestion of the brain, brought on by acute indigestion”, or as his Bangor Whig newspaper reported it, “by the strain and overwork in connection with his official duties”.

The next day Charles was carried via a private rail car back to Bangor. But it was quickly realized that he was too violent to be treated at home. The 62 year old was transported back to Boston, and taken to the McLean asylum in Belmont, Massachusetts. Seventy years earlier, it was McLean staff member Mary Sawyer, whose relationship with a pet had inspired the poem “Mary Had A Little Lamb”. But it was also the first psychiatric hospital in America which studied the biological causes of mental illness.  Just five years earlier, under Superintendent Dr. Edward Cowles, the hospital moved to a new hill top “cottage plan” campus (above), where patents could be treated in a residential environment. At week's end the New York Times reported that although “officials are very reticent in the matter...(Congressman Boutelle was) not considered in any immediate danger.” But other than an occasional day trip, he would never leave the McLean Hospital again. And his medical bills would force his daughters and brother to sell the Whig Courier newspaper that March..

It wasn't that Maine was short of loyal Republicans eager to replace the “handsomest man in congress”, nor that Maine voters did not think it important they be represented by a functional congressman. But 1900 would be a Presidential election year, and Speaker Reed simply had too much else on his plate. So, at the end of December, it was announced that the Navy committee which Boutelle chaired, would return to work in January, with the now hospitalized congressman still officially its chairman. His daughters still collected his salary, and his party still had the use of his patronage. Come September Charles Boutelle won his last election, probably already unaware he had ever held public office. He won it by only 10,000 votes, instead of his usual 18,000. And in November the powers of his office, exercised by his friend Speaker Thomas Reed, were able to help fellow Republican and fellow Maine man, William McKinley, to win the White House, defeating (again) the Democrat Bryant.

As soon as the election was over, Reed moved in the House to have Charles (above) retroactively appointed a retired captain in the U.S. Navy. Considering his Civil War record, and his dedication in creating the “Great White Fleet” which had just won the Spanish American War of 1898, this seemed a reasonable reward to an eight term congressman, who at the time had no other pension. To encourage the Senate to agree, Dr. Cowles who came down from Boston, was authorized to issue a public statement on the first anniversary of Boutelle's admission to McLean's. “At the present time,” said the doctor, “the indications are not so favorable...for a degree of recovery.. .In my own opinion he should never resume the cares of active life or under take any business responsibilities, and he may live but a few years.”

It seems likely Charles had suffered for years from an advanced case of Altzeimers, first identified by Dr. Aloysius Alzheimer. In 1901 “Alois” began working in Frankfurt on the Main, Germany, with a 51 year old woman named Auguste Deter (above), who had suddenly begun screaming in the middle of the night. She was befuddled and had lost increasingly large chunks of her memory. When Dr. Alzheimer questioned her, she would repeat, “Ich hab mich verloren” - “I am lost”.  Her dementia progressed rapidly until her death on 8 April, 1906. In a November 1906 speech, after examining slides of her brain tissue using a new staining technique, Dr. Alzheimer identified plaque build-up on the neurons in Auguste's brain as identifying the disease. In effect the disease destroyed her identity from the inside, as it had done five years earlier in America to Charles Boutelle.

On Wednesday, 16 January, 1901, Charles' captain's pension went into effect. And on Sunday, 3  March, Charles (above)  submitted his resignation from congress, the day before the new congress convened.  It was a play, of course. By this stage of his disease, it is very unlikely Charles was capable of signing a letter. Still the smooth transition did honor to its probable architect, Speaker James Reed. Call it the last act of friendship for an old argumentative ally. And as if part of the same plan, eleven weeks later, on Tuesday, 21 May, 1901, Charles Addison Boutelle died of pneumonia, a build up of fluid in his lungs, caused by his inability to get out of bed.

He remains the only congressman on record to be re-elected while confined in a mental institution. But the country is young, yet. Given us another 200 years, and I 'm sure we will get at least one more. And maybe this one will actually be just plain crazy.

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MISTER UNLUCKY - Life and Death of Alfred Brady

 

I don't believe in curses, but the hard luck existence of Alfred James Brady may cause me to reconsider this conviction. Alfred was born on 25 October,  1910  in the isolated crossroads of Kentland, atop the flatlands of northwest Indiana - four miles from the Illinois border and just about forever from anywhere else.  Curse number two was delivered when Alfred was just two years old and his father, Roy Brady, died in a farming accident. 

His mother Clara eventually remarried, to Mr. John Biddle.  He moved Clara and the boy 140 miles south on the Monon Railroad to New Salem (above), northwest of Indianapolis. At the age of sixteen Alfred suffered yet another loss, when Clara died in December of 1926. She was just 37.  And in 1928 Alfred's stepfather also died. That was four strikes before Alfred was twenty.

It might be well to pause here to discuss the differences between Alfred Brady and that other Hoosier handful, John Herbert Dillinger (above), who grew up forty-one miles south of North Salem in Mooresville, Indiana. Dillinger – or Public Enemy Number One as the FBI liked to refer to him - was seven years older than Alfred, and his mother had died when he was three. 

But perhaps the most interesting thing these two men had in common was that Dillinger's Prussian born father ran a grocery store for a time, and four months after his own stepfather's death, Alfred Brady sought his fortune by walking into a grocery store.  Alfred pretended to have a gun in his pocket and demanded all the money in the till. The clerk pulled his real gun and opened fire. Alfred got shot three times, and was arrested – strike number five.

Alfred (above) served six months on the Indiana State Prison Farm, learning how to shovel horse manure, Upon his release tried to go straight.  Despite the Great Depression Alfred (above) found work as a delivery boy for a hot tamale stand, a stock boy in a men's clothing store, a welder in an automobile factory, and later, the same job in a mattress factory.  Alfred's dissatisfaction with entry level jobs reached a crescendo on 10 July, 1934, when he was arrested for vagrancy.  Alfred was adrift and looking for a career.

The next turning point in Alfred's life came when he met James Dalhover (above). James was a five foot four inch tall career criminal, four years older and two inches shorter than Alfred. 

James' skill set was mostly at making moonshine, which financed his purchase of a farm outside of Hanover, Indiana (above) -  strategically located along the distribution route for bootleg booze between Louisville and Cincinnati. But revenue agents had recently shut down this home industry just before  James was released from a term at the State Farm. This setback, plus his time in jails in New Mexico, Kentucky and Ohio, tempted James to team up with Alfred.

Their first joint venture was in mid October 1935, robbing a movie theater 50 miles south of Indianapolis, in Crothersville, Indiana. Unfortunately they chose a Monday night for their holdup, and the cash register contained just $18. The two crooks marked this up to a learning curve, and did better on the following Saturday night, 19 October , when they robbed a grocery in Sellersburg, Indiana, about ten miles north of Louisville, Kentucky. This time they walked out with $190 dollars (the equivalent of $3,000 today). The Brady Gang, as it would later be referred to, was in business.

The boys brought in twenty year old Clarence Lee Shaffer junior , who stood five feet five inches tall. And the new gang began a regular Saturday night robbery routine around southern Indiana and Ohio. James Dalhover would later boast that by the spring of 1936 they had successfully robbed about 150 gas stations and groceries, and they began to aim higher.  

On Wednesday, 4 March, 1936 they hit a jewelry store in Lima, Ohio for $8,000 cash.  So on Monday, 27 April, 1936, they returned to the scene of that crime and robed the same store again, this time making off with $27,000 in money and jewelry.  And then, the next morning,  fifty miles away, outside of the little town of Geneva, Indiana, Alfred's curse struck again.

In a farmer's field, Geneva, Indiana Police retrieved one of the numbered boxes taken from the Ohio jewelry store. This meant the proceeds of the felony had crossed state lines. And J. Edgar Hoover, the bureaucrat running the FBI, used that slim opening to label Alfred Brady as the new Public Enemy Number One.

You see, 1936 had been a presidential election year, and under pressure, Roosevelt had pulled back on New Deal spending. To ward off those budget cuts, Hoover (above) needed a replacement for his very successful John Dillinger, Public Enemy Number One campaign.  And Dillinger's “neighbor” Alfred Brady looked like the perfect fit.  

Hoover's F.B.I. issued wanted posters (above) and held press conferences, and on Wednesday, 11 May , the Indianapolis Police arrested Alfred and Clarence Shaffer. Four days later James Dalhover was arrested in Chicago, where he had gone to fence the jewelry.

To their shock, the three crooks were charged with the murder of an Indianapolis Police Officer. Whether they actually committed this murder is questionable. They were prolific crooks, and they did carry guns, and sooner or later somebody was going to get shot. But if Alfred was so cold blooded, why didn't he shoot the would-be hero who interrupted the robbery by jumping on his back? In any case Alfred must have realized it was too late now. The F.B.I. had labeled the trio as “mad dog killers”. If he ever got loose again, Brady must have known he was on a dead end road. It was enough to make you think Alfred Brady was cursed.

On Sunday morning, 11 October,  1936 , a sheriff in the Hancock County Jail was delivering breakfast to the three prisoners when they hit him over the head with an iron bar, stole his .38 revolver and made their escape in his car.  If anybody thought to ask, they might have wondered why the blood-thirsty members of the Brady gang left behind the living injured sheriff.  But Hoover and the Indianapolis police made certain nobody gave that little conundrum more than a passing thought.

The reunited trio - Alfred, James and Clarance - now permanently allied by circumstances and the police, fled to Baltimore, Maryland. Here they attempted to establish quiet, respectable lives under assumed names. James Dalhover and Clarence Shaffer even married a pair of nice Italian sisters (despite James still having a wife and two children back in Hanover). For his part, Alfred bought himself a bar. Oh, they periodically returned to Indiana to rob grocery stores and banks, but that was just “what” they did. It wasn't “who” they were. It became who they were on 27 May,  1937.

The original plan had been to rob a bank in Sheldon, Illinois, but that institution had failed in the 1937 economic downturn. So instead they robbed a bank in Goodland, Indiana, less than ten miles from Alfred's birthplace in Kentland. They walked out with all of $2,528. 

And in crisscrossing back roads making their getaway, the gang stumbled upon an intersection called Royal Center, where their careers collided with Indiana Highway Patrol Officer Paul Minneman (above) and Cass County Sheriff's Deputy Elmer Craig. 

In the ensuing fulsade of gunfire, which pierced the windshield and engine compartment of the car, Officer Minneman and Deputy Craig was both severely wounded. 

Paul Minneman would three days later.  Elmer Craig would recover, and was able to tell the police of the exchange he heard after the gunfire ended.  One of the gangsters approached the car, said Craig, and pointed a rifle at him. Craig said he heard the gunman ask, “Shall I finish this guy too? ” Another unseen gang member responded, “No, come on, let's get the hell out of here.” 

Trooper Minneman left behind a wife and an as yet unborn daughter, who would never know her father.

Whatever the truth about Alfred Brady's (above, left) responsibility in any previous killings attributed to the Brady Gang, there can be no doubt about this one. Even if he had not pulled the trigger, or had been the voice telling the gunman not to shoot the wounded deputy, he was now legally responsible for the murder of a State Police officer.

Time Magazine quoted Captain Matt Leach, head of Indiana's State Police, as saying that "because of their viciousness and the way they operate, the Brady mob is going to make Dillinger look like a neophyte.” Reading that, Alfred must have known how his story was going to end. The only questions were  “when” and "where".

In late September, the three Hoosiers drove to Bangor, Maine, looking to purchase guns and ammunition. They told the clerks in at least two sporting goods stores that they were hunters. But nobody in Maine could mistake these Indiana hoods for outdoors men. The trio returned to Bangor in early October to buy even more guns, and paid the owner of Dakin's Sporting Goods for some additional ammunition that was not in stock. The store owner told the men to return in a week to pick it up.  

And that was why, at 8:30 on the Tuesday morning of Columbus Day, 12 October , 1937, the “Brady Gang” pulled their black Buick sedan over to the curb in front of 25 Central Street, Bangor. Alfred was in the passenger seat. Clarence Shaffer, and James Dalhover got out, with James entering the store.

James Dalhover approached a clerk and asked, “Where's the stuff I ordered?” His answer came when the clerk - actually F.B.I. agent Walter Walsh (above) -  poked a gun into the back of Jame's head. Instinctively James turned, and Walsh hit him across the bridge of the nose with the pistol. Dalhover fell, and immediately struggled to regain his feet.

Outside, Clarence Shaffer saw the assault, and began firing through the store's windows. He hit agent Walsh in the shoulder. But as Clarence fired,  F.B.I. and Maine State Police “marksmen” stationed on the rooftops along Central Street, opened up on him.

Beneath those snipers, 19 year old Poppy Valiades was sitting before the front window of her family's restaurant, the Paramount Cafe, typing up the day's menus. Hearing the shots she looked up and saw Clarence staggering into the street. “ "I saw his clothes - oh, blood spilling out – bullets...he went into a kind of a coil as he moved into the street. I was probable 10 to 15 feet from him when he dropped.”

Inside the store, James Dalhover broke for the back door, and ran right into the arms of two Bangor city cops, who placed him under arrest. Meanwhile, two agents approached either side of the big Buick. They called for Al Brady to give himself up. Alfred put up his hands and responded, “Don't shoot, don't shoot, I'll get out." But he came out of the car firing and running.

He didn't hit anybody and he didn't get very far. The concentrated gunfire from the rest of the fifteen F.B.I. Agents, and 15 Indiana and Maine State Police Officers, dropped the newest Public Enemy Number One in the very middle of the busy street. Alfred had in his cold dead hand the .38 revolver taken from the holster of murdered Officer Minnemen.

Seventy-four years later, Andrew Taber, who had been on his way to the Dakin's when the shooting exploded on the street, remembered seeing Alfred Brady's body lifted into the wicker basket used to transport fatalities. He watched silver coins glinting in the bright morning sunlight as they fell out of Alfred's pocket and onto the pavement. The two dead gang members had over sixty wounds in their bodies.

The second the shooting stopped people rushed from all over to have a look;  Kalil Ayoob was having breakfast along Main Street that morning, and he remembered, “It looked like the running of the bulls in Spain.”

The only surviving member of the “Brady Gang”, the battered and beaten James Dalhover (above), was tried and convicted of the murder of Officer Minneman.  And that was the only murder any member of the gang was ever convicted of.   James died in the electric chair at the Indiana State Penitentiary, in Michigan City,  on 18 November, 1938, 

Clarence Shaffer's family sent for his body, and had it brought home to Indiana. But Alfred Brady had no family.

In the end,  he was lowered into a unmarked charity grave in Mount Hope Cemetery, in Bangor (above). Well, most of him was. For many years Alfred's brain sat in a jar at the Eastern Maine General Hospital, alongside the Penobscot River, where curious nursing students could wonder if its convolutions hid an explanation for the violence of its lifetime  -  until it finally disappeared. And with it, perhaps the Brady curse also escaped. As the longtime caretaker for the Mount Hope cemetery often told author Stephen King, “In the end, there's always Hope”.

http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=77377

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