WALTER SHERIDAN

Alias: KEENE, RALSTON

Specialties: BANK SNEAK, COUNTERFEITER, FORGER

No: 8 Last Displayed: 4/11/2024

Description:

Fifty-five years old in 1886. Born in New Orleans, La. Married. No trade.Height, 5 feet 7 inches. Weight, about 165 pounds. Light brown hair, dark eyes. Roman nose, square chin. Generally wears blonde whiskers. He is a good-looking man, and assumes a dignified appearance.

Record:

WALTER SHERIDAN is an accomplished thief, a daring forger, bank sneak, hotel thief, pennyweight-worker and counterfeiter. He is also one of the most notorious criminals in America. Among his aliases are Stewart, John Holcom, Chas. Ralston, Walter Stanton, Charles H. Keene, etc. When a boy, Sheridan drifted into crime and made his appearance in Western Missouri as a horse thief. He finally became an accomplished general thief and confidence man, but made a specialty of sneaking banks. In 1858 he was arrested with Joe Moran, a noted Western sneak thief and burglar, for robbing a bank in Chicago, Ill., and was sentenced to five years in the Alton, Ill., penitentiary, which time he served. He was afterwards concerned in the robbery of the First National Bank of Springfield, Ill., with Charley Hicks and Philly Phearson (5). Sheridan engaged the teller, Hicks staid outside, and Phearson crawled through a window and obtained $35,000 from the bank vault. Hicks was arrested and sentenced to eight years in Joliet prison. Philly Phearson escaped and went to Europe. Sheridan was arrested in Toledo, 0., shortly afterwards with $22,000 in money on him. He was tried for this offense but acquitted. He next appeared in a "sneak job" in Baltimore, Md., in June, 1870, where he and confederates secured $50,000 in securities from the Maryland Fire Insurance Company. After this he secured $37,000 in bonds from the Mechanics' Bank of Scranton, Pa. He was also implicated and obtained his share of $20,000 stolen from the Savings and Loan Bank of Cleveland, 0., in 1870. He was arrested in this case, but secured his release by the legal technicalities of the law. Sheridan's most important work was in the hypothecation of $100,000 in forged bonds of the Buffalo, New York and Erie Railroad Company to the New York Indemnity and Warehouse Company, in 1873, for which he obtained $84,000 in good hard cash. It took months to effect this loan. He took desk room in a broker's office on the lower part of Broadway, New York, representing himself as a returned Californian of ample means. He speculated in grain, became a member of the Produce Exchange, under the name of Charles Ralston, and secured advances on cargoes of grain. He gained the confidence of the President of the Indemnity and Warehouse Company, telling him that his mother in California had a large amount of railroad bonds which she wanted to obtain a loan upon, to buy real estate. Sheridan gave him the bonds ($125,000), and received a certified check for $84,000, which he cashed at once and divided with his accomplices, Andy Roberts, Valentine Gleason, and Charles B. Orvis; after which he and Martha Hargraves went to Europe, taking with them 200 of the same $1,000 forged bonds to place in the European market. They went to Switzerland, and put up at the house of a well known English ticket-of-leave man. In their absence, one day, the daughter of this ex-convict stole the bonds from Sheridan's trunk. When accused of the theft she said that she heard that the police were coming to the house to search it, and had burned them, when in fact she had given them to her father, who afterwards realized considerable money from them. Sheridan and Martha returned to America, and Sheridan was shortly after arrested in Washington, D. C, for this forgery, brought to New York, tried, convicted, and sentenced to five years in Sing Sing prison, for forgery in the third degree, on March 6, 1877. Roberts and Gleason were also arrested in this case, and were confined in Ludlow Street Jail, New York, for years. Sheridan was an associate of Horace Hovan (25). Johnny Jourdan (83), Billy Burke (162), George Carson (3), Tommy Mulligan, Joe McCloskey, Dave Cummings (50), and other first-class men. Sheridan was arrested again in Philadelphia, Pa., for a "pennyweight job" - a box of diamonds - and sentenced to three years in the Eastern Penitentiary and fined $500, on October 6, 1881. His time expired early in 1884. He was arrested again in St. Louis, Mo., on November 19, 1884, under the name of John Holcom, by the United States authorities, for having three counterfeit $500 bills in his possession, and sentenced to two years in State prison in the latter part of November, 1884. See record of George Wilkes, also. Sheridan's picture is a good one, taken in 1876.