Gone in Sixty Seconds: Joyriders and Criminals
With Ford’s
“democratization” of the automobile and an explosion in the number of vehicles
came an epidemic of automobile theft. Machines produced in mass quantities made
easy prey for “joy-riders” and professional criminals. Moreover, the automobile
was valuable, mobile, and its parts were interchangeable. Lucrative domestic
and international markets for stolen automobiles and stolen parts yielded high
profits. Interchangeable parts also gave thieves the opportunity to quickly
reconstruct and disguise stolen automobiles. As evinced by thieves’ ability to
alter serial numbers, duplicate registration papers, switch radiators, and
replace entire engine blocks, a nascent uniformity welcomed theft. Moreover,
thieves sought out and stole the most ubiquitous automobile; popular,
mid-priced models were most likely to be stolen, along with the easy to steal
Model T. As early as 1910 joyriding and automobile theft were problems for the
automobilist. Major concerns centered on the unauthorized use of an owner’s
vehicle by a chauffeur or a parking attendant. To that end a number of devices
were marketed, from a gear shift lever lock to recorders that kept tabs on when
a vehicle was actually being driven.84
Until the
introduction of the electric self-starter in 1912, automobiles employed a
battery/magneto switch along with a crank.85 The automobilist turned
the switch to B (battery), got outside the car, cranked the engine, and then
once it started, moved the lever to M (magneto) and adjusted the carburetor. On
early Ford Model T’s, the battery/magneto switch had a brass lever key, but
there were only two types, with either a round or square shank. Later, in 1919,
Ford offered an optional lockable electric starter, but only used twenty-four
key patterns. To make things easy for the thief, each pattern was stamped with
a code on both the key and the starter plate. Would-be joy-riders needed only a
little luck to drive off with any unguarded Model T.
Unlike
other stolen goods, the automobile enabled its own escape. As one author
observed in 1919:
Not
only is the motor vehicle a particularly valuable piece of
property . . . but it furnishes at the same time an almost ideal
getaway . . . With the automobile there is no planning to
be done. With a thousand divergent roads open to him and a vehicle possessing
almost unlimited speed, escape is practically automatic.86
A New York
Police official commented in 1916 that, “the automobile is a very easy thing to
steal and a hard thing to find.”87 As early as 1915, 401 automobiles
were stolen in New York and only 338 were recovered.88 By 1920, it
was estimated that one-tenth of cars manufactured annually were eventually
stolen. Astonishingly, perhaps, in 1925 it was estimated that 200,000 to
250,000 cars were stolen annually.89 Table 2 provides theft data for
major American cities.
Table 2. Automobile Thefts in Major American Cities,
1922-1925
City |
Year |
|||
1922 |
1923 |
1924 |
1925 |
|
New York |
7,107 |
7,959 |
10,064 |
11,895 |
Chicago |
3,636 |
2,334 |
4,946 |
7,587 |
Detroit |
3,194 |
4,428 |
7,187 |
11,750 |
Los Angeles |
4,802 |
4,218 |
7,326 |
8,392 |
San Francisco |
1,960 |
2,154 |
3,257 |
3,746 |
Dayton |
249 |
313 |
366 |
485 |
Source: Automotive Industries, 56 (February
19, 1927), 283.
Further,
the automobile created new opportunities for criminals and confronted legal
authorities with a myriad of problems. One author noted that, “as automobile
thefts increase burglaries and robberies increase.”90 The automobile
itself was stolen, but the automobile also played a central role in kidnapping,
rum running, larceny, burglary, traffic crimes, robberies, and the deadly
accidents of the “lawless years.”91 The Baltimore Criminal Justice
Commission reported that
In August, 1922, one of Baltimore’s
well known and highly respected citizens was held up, robbed of $7000 and
brutally murdered in broad daylight on the busy thoroughfares of the city. The
bandits perpetrating this carefully planned crime escaped in a high powered car
bearing stolen license plates.92
In 1924,
Arch Mandel of the Dayton Research Association observed, “The motor vehicle has
ushered in a new era of crime and police problems, and apparently a new type of
offender.”93 “To cope with this problem” Mandel wrote, “police
departments have been obliged to detail special squads and to establish special
bureaus for recovering stolen automobiles . . . this has
added to the cost of operating police departments.”94 Consequently,
the increase in mobility was matched with a growth in government. The cost of
police work in cities with populations over 30,000 rose steadily from
approximately $38 million in 1903 to $184.5 million in 1927.95
Automobile theft added new categories of crimes, and as a piece of technology
became a central part of burglary and housebreaking. In Philadelphia, 8,896
people were arrested for assault and battery by the automobile.96 In
response, police began to patrol with the automobile. In 1922, Chicago police
complained that their worn-out “tin lizzies” should be scrapped; they could not
catch the high powered hold-up car that traveled at sixty miles an hour.97
Even with the growth of government and the advent of patrolling, police forces
were out-maneuvered by mobile criminals. Contrary to the iconic Prohibition
image of police forces smashing barrels of alcohol, municipal police forces may
have dealt with automobiles on a more regular basis.
Automobile
theft was most acute in Detroit and Los Angeles. “Naturally Detroit is
peculiarly liable to this trouble because it has such a large floating
population of men trained in mechanical expertise in the various factories.”98
It stood to reason that Ford’s workers stole Ford’s Cars. In Detroit, in 1928,
a total of 11,259 cars were stolen.99 The same year in Los Angeles
10,813 automobiles were stolen.100 By the 1920s, Los Angeles had the
most automobiles per resident in the United States. Historian Scott Bottles
pointed out, “By 1925, every other Angelino owned an automobile as opposed to
the rest of the country where there was only one car for every six people.”101
Angelinos had more opportunities to steal cars. Baltimore, New York City,
Rochester, Buffalo, Cleveland, Omaha, St. Louis, and many other cities also
experienced major problems related to automobile theft. In an article published
in Country Life, Alexander Johnson
revealed the problem was not just endemic to urban America: “We who live in the country are not quite as
subject as our urban brethren to this abominable outrage, but automobile stealing
is carried on even in the rural districts.”102
The cost of
police work in state governments also rose from approximately $98 million in
1915 to $117 million in 1927.103 To combat auto theft, state
governments created license, registration, title, and statistical bureaus and
urged the federal government to become involved. E. Austin Baughman,
Commissioner of Motor Vehicles of Maryland, cited 1919 as “the climax of an epidemic
of car stealing” with 922 cars stolen, 709 recovered, and 213 missing.104
Baughman urged the country to adopt a Title Law which would assure all motor
vehicles could be identified and located through the name and address of the
owner on record. 105 The bureau helped Maryland to gather
statistics:
. . . one can in a
comparatively short time find anything from how many 1912 Cadillacs are still
in existence in this state, to how many more Fords were stolen than Chevrolets
in 1923 or 1922; and from how many six- and seven-ton trucks are still in use
in Maryland and to what percentage of cars stolen in 1923 are still missing.106
In 1920, Massachusetts developed a similar program under the
used-car department of the Department of Public Works.107 States that
did not pass title laws were a nationwide liability and became alleged “dumping
grounds” by neighboring states.108
The
inter-state nature of automobile theft demanded federal intervention. The
automobile nullified state boundaries and contributed to the nationalization of
crime fighting. Arch Mandel wrote in 1924 that, “State lines have been
eliminated by the automobile” and the “detection of criminals is becoming more
and more a nation-wide task.”109
In 1919,
Congress passed the National Motor Vehicle Theft Act, which received the
appellation of its sponsor, Senator Leonidus Dyer. The Dyer Act promulgated
that thieves receive fines of $5,000 and 10 years in prison, or both. The
American Automobile Association lobbied congress to pass the Dyer Act.110
Consequently, between 1922-1933 auto thefts were the most prominent federal
prosecution of interstate commerce.111
During the
first two decades of the twentieth century, of auto theft was blamed on the
owner negligence. A 1916 insurance company pamphlet entitled “Emergency
Instructions,” warned owners that “when dining in a public restaurant the
driver of the car should be seated in such a position that he can observe his
car.”112 Basic instructions also warned to “not leave your car
unprotected on the street or any place at any time.”113 However, in
1922 many automobile owners left keys in their unlocked cars.114 An
article in Popular Mechanics Magazine observed,
“Approximately seventy-five percent of all the cars that were not stolen were
not locked at all.”115 One author chastised drivers for leaving
automobiles unattended for an hour or more.116 Beyond common-sense
precautions, automobile owners were advised to take preventive measures to stop
early car thieves. Owners were advised to lock their doors or “garage” their
automobiles. In his 1917 article “Automobile Thefts,” John Brennan proposed one
countermeasure: “If owners would only
take steps to put private identification marks on their cars, the problem of
automobile thievery would be a simple one to solve.”117 It was
suggested that the owner bore holes into the underside of the running boards,
scratch their name somewhere secret, or tape an identification card inside the
upholstery.118 A 1926 article in Popular
Mechanics passed on to readers one motorist’s intricate plan of fake coils
and pseudo ignition connections.119 Other articles proposed that
owners disconnect the magneto. In any case, the prevailing attitude of the day
was that automobile theft was usually the owner’s fault. In 1929, E. L.
Rickards, manager of the Automobile Protective and Information Bureau in
Chicago, stated: “A man or woman who leaves his car unlocked and unattended is
committing an offense against society.”120
Thieves
were recognized as frauds, joy-riders, professionals, and gangs. They stole a
range of models, but mostly low-priced Chevrolets, Plymouths, Chryslers, and
Fords.121 Furthermore, automobiles were most likely to be stolen in
business or entertainment districts, where individuals parked the same models
in the same place. Often a thief caught red-handed simply claimed that they had
hopped into the wrong car. When interrogated by a judge, one thief explained
why he was in the wrong Ford: “Because both cars are Fords, and all Fords look
alike, not only to me but to their owners.”122 Charges were dropped.
Despite preferences to steal commonplace vehicles, elite and unusual
automobiles were not exempt from the threat of theft. Expensive cars were
stolen, disassembled and repainted.
Early
automobile thefts were performed by owners who would, “steal their own car.” To
collect on insurance, owners would strip the car of accessories and move it to
an out of the way location. The owner would work with a
thief: . . . the owner is in partnership with the thief. An
auto, for instance, that is insured for $2,000 is reported by the owner as having
been stolen. The machine is worth $1,500. So the owner, collecting his theft
insurance, makes a clean profit of $500.123
Owners in
debt often defrauded insurance companies as well: “an automobile owner, after
using his insured car for nine or ten months, discovers that its market value
is 40 percent lower than when first purchased; also the cost of maintaining the
machine, oil, gasoline, tires, repairs, etc., is considerably in excess of the
figure on which his first maintenance costs were based.”124
Quite
different in terms of criminal intent were the activities of the so-called
joy-rider. Joy-riders stole for thrills. In 1917, Secretary to the Detroit
Chief of Police, George A. Walters estimated that 90 percent of Detroit’s auto
thefts were performed by joy-riders.125 Joy-riders were often groups
of young men in pursuit of fun, and had a “taste for motoring.”126
One author argued that joy-riders (in all cases male) had a sexual motivation,
“Some young fellow with sporty tendencies and a slim pocketbook wants to make a
hit with some charming member of the opposite sex . . . he
thinks an automobile would help him in the pursuit of her affections.”127
After a joy-ride, automobiles were often found damaged and out of gas.
Historian David Wolcott has noted that in Los Angeles, “Boys approached auto
theft with a surprisingly casual attitude – they often just took vehicles that
they found unattended, drove them around for an evening and abandoned them when
they were done – but the LAPD treated auto theft very seriously.”128
In the early period of automobility, authorities considered “joy-riding” a
serious societal problem. Joy-riding was an action of a delinquent. Joy-riding
was so serious that young boys were prosecuted under the Dyer Act of 1919. The
federal government did not draw a distinction between joy-riding and
professional auto theft until 1930.129 Congressmen Dyer called for
the repeal of his own law, and to convince the U.S. House of Representatives of
the need for repeal, he read a letter from the superintendent of a
penitentiary:
Of the 450 Federal Boys in the National
Training School here in Washington, nearly 200 are violators of the Dyer Act,
with the ages distributed as follows: Two boys 12 years of age, 6 boys 13 years
of age, 19 boys 14 years of age, 31 boys of 15 years of age, 64 boys 16 years
of age, 48 boys 17 years of age, 19 boys of 18 years of age, 1 boy 19 years of
age, and 1 boy 22 years of age.130
Due to the capricious nature of theft for a joy-ride,
policemen and journalists surmised that it could be easily prevented: “It is
against this class of thief that the various types of automobile-locking
devices and hidden puzzles are effective . . . since the
joy-rider does more than half the stealing it follows that car-locks are more
than 50 percent effective in protecting a car.”131 However, more
elaborate means would be necessary to stop the professional thief.
Writers who
addressed auto theft from 1915 to 1938 admitted that the professional thief
could not be stopped. Professional thieves employed an array of tactics to
steal automobiles. Often chauffeurs, mechanics, and garage men became thieves.
Even though locks supposedly prevented theft by joy-riders, thieves would
simply cut padlocks and chains with bolt-cutters.132 Often this was
not necessary, since keys to early Fords were easy to obtain. In 1917, Edward
C. Crossman described the naïve Ford owner:
Ford owners take out the switch key on
the coil box and go strutting off as if they’d [sic] locked the car in the safe
deposit box. The first half-baked auto mechanic who needs a Ford can slip in
another key and depart via the jitney route without paying his fair.133
Crossman’s solution was to lock a heavy metal band around
the front wheel of the automobile.134 In a May 1929 article “Tricks
of the Auto Thief,” Popular Mechanics described
the array of tactics open to the automobile thief. Thieves stole accessories,
unlocked and started cars with duplicate keys, “jumped” the ignition by placing
a wire across the ignition coil to the spark plugs, ripped-off car dealerships,
and towed cars away.135 “Some thieves make a specialty of buying
wrecked or burned cars as junk . . . they receive a bill of
sale, salvage parts which they place on stolen cars, and so disguise the
finished automobile as a legitimate car for which they have the bill of sale.”136
One method called “kissing them away” involved an individual breaking into a
car, and being unable to start the ignition, a “confederate,” would push the
stolen car with his car from behind. The car would be moved into a garage or
alley and promptly dismantled.137 Thieves used interchangeable parts
to confuse authorities. In 1925, Joe Newell, head of the automobile theft
bureau in Des Moines, Iowa, stated, “the greatest transformation that takes
place in the stolen machine is in the clever doctoring of motor serial
numbers . . . this is the first thing a thief does to a
car.”138 Automobiles were branded with a serial number that
corresponded to a factory record, but thieves used several tactics to change
the numbers. The “doctoring” of numbers involved filing down numbers and
branding a new numbers into the car, or changing single numbers. In a detailed
article entitled “Stolen Automobile Investigation,” William J. Davis noted, “It
is possible for a thief to restamp a 4 over a 1; an 8 over a 3 where the 3 is a
round top 3; a 5 over a 3; to change a 6 to an 8, or a 9 to an 8, or an 0 to an
8.”139
Apparently
the joy-riding problem declined in the 1930s, but organized gangs emerged as a
more serious threat to steal automobiles and, in the process, vex authorities.
In Popular Science Monthy, Edward
Teale noted:
. . . the automobile
stealing racket in the United States has mounted to a $50,000,000-a-year
business. During the first six months of 1932, 36,000 machines disappeared in
seventy-two American cities alone. In New York City, $2,000,000 worth of cars
was reported stolen in 1931.140
Gangs developed sophisticated automobile theft operations
from the expert driver to expert mechanic. Gangs even developed their own
vernacular.141 A stolen car was a “kinky,” or a “hot short.” The
“clouter” actually stole the car and the “wheeler” drove it to the “dog house.”
The thieves were concerned with stealing the popular, mid-priced, widely-used
makes. Gangs often specialized in a certain make or model. One New York gang
“scrambled” the stolen automobiles: “a number of machines of the same make and
model are stolen at the same time . . . wheels are
switched, transmissions shifted, bodies’ changed, and engines transferred from
one car to another.”142
At other
times, gangs would use the “mother system.” Under this system, thieves stole a
certain make, had a fake bill of sale made, and changed all of the serial
numbers to be identical to the bill of sale. Ultimately, four or five of the
same car, with the same serial numbers and bills of sale would exist.143
In 1936, J. Edgar Hoover penned an article about gangster and international car
thief named Gabriel Vigorito (a.k.a. Bla-Bla Blackman), who had amassed a $1
million fortune from automobile theft.144 “The “hot car” depots of a
dozen states dealt in his goods . . . In Persia, Russia,
Germany, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, and even China, the American car business
included many automobiles stolen from the streets of Brooklyn.” Authorities
convicted Bla-Bla to ten years in prison. Historically, the point is poignant:
the automobile trumped not only state lines, but national lines. The rise of an
industrial and global industry also rose with a global theft ring. In 1936, the
Roosevelt Administration entered a treaty with Mexico for “the recovery and
return of stolen or embezzled motor vehicles, trailers, airplanes or the
component parts of any of them.”145 The treaty prompted a convention
with Mexico in 1937 to address the stolen automobile problem.146
To control
rampant automobile crimes, authorities developed scientific means to fight
crime. As early as 1919, a system of fingerprints to identify automobile owners
was proposed.147 Throughout the 1920s, law enforcement of automobile
theft remained ineffective. By 1934, police developed sophisticated means to
monitor a more mobile public. In 1936 it was urged that “every city join the
nation-wide network of inter-city radio-telegraph service provided for by the
Federal Communications Commission.”148 Police developed processes
using chemicals and torches to identify fake serial numbers. Los Angeles police
department officers departed the station for their shift with a list of stolen
automobiles printed the night before.149 Developments in
communication aided police officers. “Chattering teletype machines and
short-wave radio messages outdistance the fleetest car, while police encircle a
fleeing criminal in an effort to make escape impossible.”150 Radio
communication made auto theft difficult. By 1934, “auto thieves found their
racket a losing one.”151 In response to mobile crime, Governments at
all levels grew more sophisticated. Insurance companies also grew more
sophisticated: “In Chicago, a central salvage bureau, maintained by insurance
companies is being established in an effort to wipe out a 10,000,000-a-year
racket in stolen parts.”152 Automobile manufacturers invested in a
“pick-proof” lock.153 From 1933 to 1936, insurance companies and the
government destroyed the market for stolen automobiles and stolen parts. In
1934 Popular Science Monthly reported,
“figures compiled by the National Automobile Underwriters Association show that
eighty-six percent of the cars stolen in 1930 were recovered while in 1931
eighty-two percent were recovered and eighty-nine percent in 1932.”154
What the above paragraphs suggest is that the
automobile placed unprecedented challenges before local, state, and federal
government agencies, and in response the responsibilities and scale of
government changed as a consequence. Indeed, the law itself changed, and that
included the area of tort law during the 1920s, as sorting out negligence as a
consequence of automobile accidents also posed new problems that demanded
innovative structural solutions.
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