1874 - Crime

Crime

First National Bank of Morrison, Illinois, thwarts prospective robbers May 26 by letting Rochester, New York, inventor James Sargent of Sargent & Greenleaf install the world's first time lock to its vaulted door. A former sales agent for Yale & Greenleaf Lock, Sargent devised the first successful key-changeable combination lock, went into partnership with his onetime employer Halbert Greenleaf 9 years ago, and last year used parts from other locks and two 8-day kitchen clocks to create the time lock (see time combination lock, 1880).

Texas gunman John Wesley Hardin celebrates his 22nd birthday May 26 and is confronted by Brown County Sheriff Charles Webb, who says he comes in peace. Hardin, drunk, turns toward the bar, Webb starts to draw, a bystander shouts a warning, Hardin whirls and fires before Webb's gun is out, and the sheriff falls. Hardin has killed about 20 men but never stood trial. He will be captured at Pensacola, Florida, in 1877 and charged with killing Webb. Convicted of second-degree murder, he will serve 17 years of a 25-year sentence at hard labor before winning parole (see 1895).