Front page headlines. Large print: “Series of Burglaries…One Man Taken Into Custody On Suspicion”. This was on Tuesday, Nov. 7, 1905.

“The burglaries were the boldest that have been committed in this section for a long time. The parties who did the work have left but a very slight clue…”. Three locations broken into, plus “the souvenir postal box at the entrance to A.P. Drew’s photography rooms,” had been smashed in an unsuccessful attempt to access the contents.

Dover Bottling Company’s store had been targeted, but the owner could not find anything missing. Part of a pane of glass from a basement window on Fourth Street had been smashed, then the window itself removed. Desk drawers had been ransacked, but no apparent attempt had been made on a nearby safe. A bloody handkerchief was recovered in the basement, likely a product of the broken glass.

The bolt on a door leading to Fred Foss’s store on Central Avenue had been forced, but inside, the cash register appeared to be untouched, and there was no sign of anything missing. There was some speculation that the real target had been the Hayes Jewelry store next door, but no evidence of any attempt to enter was found.

A meat and provisions store at 36 Locust St., owned by Thomas Hughes, was “visited” by the burglars, and here they made the best haul of the night, not small change from a cash register, but $26 from a drawer in Mr. Hughes’ desk. The window they used for entry was a short distance from the Dover Police Station, in an alley to the rear of the building, between Locust and Saint Thomas streets. The office was “pretty well ransacked,” and the cash register was severely damaged.

After making the point a second time that there were very few clues left behind, late morning on Tuesday the police appeared at “the room” of one William Hanna, who was still in bed, and after some conversation and a brief search of his effects, placed him in custody “on suspicion.”

Hanna was described as someone who had been stopping in Dover for the past few weeks, renting a room on Fifth Street. It’s not entirely clear what led them to Hanna at that point, but it’s obvious this was something more than a random visit. It stemmed from information received regarding a residential break-in at the home of Ernest Plummer. This had occurred the previous Friday, the 3rd, and some silver coins had been taken. Investigation had traced the whereabouts of one of these coins to a pool room in the Kennedy Block. People there were questioned, and it was Hanna who came forward to say that he had paid with the silver coin and identified the person who gave it to him. That person was questioned and denied any knowledge of it. That apparently was enough to place Hanna under suspicion.

A $5 bill was found in one of his pockets. Assistant Marshall Wilkinson then searched a bureau drawer but found nothing. According to the reporter, police officer Cornell, who was also present, observed that Hanna seemed to visibly relax when nothing was found, so he went to the bureau and made a second search, coming up with a sock which contained $21, the total of $26 now corresponding to the amount taken from Hughes’ store. Assuming they now had the guilty party, a search was commenced for a second suspect, a “young man” who had been seen with Hanna the previous evening, and… these two fit the description of a duo who had robbed Miss Annie Arno on the Littleworth Road the previous Saturday. So, let’s go back to that event, described as a “bold highway robbery” in a report on Nov. 11. This is the story:

Annie Arno was employed doing housework for Miss Susan Kay, whose home was near the Littleworth bridge (there are Kays still at that location). Ms. Arno had done some shopping in town and was on her way back home, around 8 p.m., when she passed two young men near the corner of Arch and Silver streets. The same two caught up with her at the intersection of Bellamy and Littleworth roads, and one grabbed her and tried to hold her while at the same time covering her mouth. The other grabbed a handbag she was carrying. Arno struggled, pushed away her assailant’s hand and screamed, more than once, “as loud as she could.” The two males took off, jumped a fence, and headed across an open field in the direction of the B&M tracks. Miss Arno was badly shaken but able to provide the police with a description: between the ages of 18 and 20, wearing dark clothing, each with a sweater and a skull cap. She had a little over $1 in the bag that was taken. Not an awful lot of information that would help in identifying and locating the guilty parties.

The police are now faced with the attack on Miss Arno on Friday, the theft at Hughes’ market, and two other break-ins where there was damage, but apparently nothing taken. On top of this, there is a report around 1:30 p.m. on Monday that there was an attempted assault on a young girl on her way back from the Belknap School, where she had left off her sister after her dinner break (it was still “dinner” back then, not yet “lunch”). The suspect was described as being around 20 years of age, dressed in a dark suit of clothes and a black, stiff hat. The man was scared off by the victim’s screams and headed down the Portsmouth and Dover railroad tracks in the direction of Sawyer’s Mills. Officers were called and searched the area, in the midst of a serious rainstorm, from Rutland Street to Cataract Avenue, Bellamy Road to Locust Street, without turning up any prospects. It was said that the young woman gave a good description of her attacker, and without any further explanation of why, police determined that there was likely a connection to the theft from Miss Arno.

This theory was strengthened when a man named W.S. Brown came forward to say that he had been walking in the area of the railroad just prior to 1 p.m. and had observed two young men near the Silver Street bridge. His description of one closely matched that of the young girl’s assailant. Brown was asked to come to the station to see if he could identify Hanna, who was still in custody. By this point, having put two and two together, the police had more than a suspicion that Hanna was involved in several criminal activities, including a previously unreported burglary of the public library a few weeks prior. As reported in the press, “Hanna is a pretty cool artist and never once lost his nerve while being examined by the Marshall before being locked up in a cell.”

(more to come…)