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Saturday, September 25, 2021

Thief Trades Life of Crime for Work as Police Janitor, September 25, 1921

Was Too Bad to Be Any Worse So Misch “Joined” The Force. . . Knight of the Broom at Police Headquarters Had His Past Writ Up for Public Consumption and Private Preservation—Has Run the Category of Crime

By Brock Barkley

“Misch” Brown, being now in the sixth year of his life as Knight of the broom of Police headquarters and a bona fide member in good standing of the upper or social strata of this town’s population, is highly desirous of having “writ up” for public consumption and private preservation a record of that eventful portion of his career, covering a period of 27 years, in which he was one of the most dashing figures of the local underworld.

“Misch” in his day has done everything the law said he musn’t do, from purloining a five-cent peace to the sale of the cold body of a negro woman to a bunch of medical students for $12. He has served 20 years on the chain gang and estimates the number of times he has been arrested at 300. And it all took place in Charlotte.

“Misch” used to day, back in the old days, that the only reason for hiring Jim Johnson and Mack Earnhardt, Charlotte’s veteran sleuths of 10 years ago, was to hunt him. Every time he saw a policeman he would run, urged on by a guilty conscience. Whenever business was dull about headquarters and officers had no arrests to their credit that day, they went in search of “Misch,” satisfied that he was guilty of something. “And he admits that he always was.

HAS HAD ONE JOB

“Misch” estimates that he has handled in stolen goods about $10,000. He never held but one job in his life, outside of a chain gang job, and that is the one he now possesses. He started to work six years ago for $3 a week.

“Don’t say how much I’m getting now, but it’s a considerable increase,” he advised Saturday afternoon, after obtaining acquiescence from the reporter to duly record his life after the deletion of some of the things he had done which he ought not to have done.

The night preceding the day “Misch” reported for work at the police station he made a raid on the late Stone and Barringer Book Store and carried away two pocketsful of fountain pens. These were in his overcoat pocket when he went to work next morning but en route to dinner that day he threw them into a sewer and holding his right hand high in the air, swore: “Never again.”

And he’s lived straight since; a reformed bad man; a bold bad man, “Misch” used to consider himself, because he never ran from anything but a cop. He’s in entire agreement with this effort to record his history, not because he’s proud of his career, but because he’s proud of the past six years in view of that career.

RECALLS SOME EVILS

It would be impossible to recall all the unlawful things he has done, Brown explained, but several “stuck out” clear in his mind. He will never forget the day he “went wrong.” He was about six. His mother sent him to an uptown grocer to buy a nickel’s worth of baking powder. His mother never got that baking powder, but he got a licking.

A week later he purloined a supply of meal from the back porch of a house now standing at Trade and Graham streets. He sold the meal to a grocer and spent the money in riotous living. He was caught and licked.

He first became acquainted with the chain gang when he threw a rock through the big bass drum of the Charlotte Drum Corps while a lively march was in order. The rock went through both sides of the drum and landed on the head of a musician standing nearby. “Misch” went to Captain Little’s camp for 10 days.

“Ah nevah did hard labor on the roads but foah yeahs of de 20,” Brown boasted. “When ah first started going out ah was watah boy, and when ah got grown ah developed into a first class wagon driver and a town boy.”

SOLD DEAD BODY

Captain Little and the guards soon became well acquainted with “Misch” after his 10-day visit. He remained in town only a few days before he went back. Brown’s job regularly, after he became a veteran, was to haul persons who had died in camp or at the county home to town and bury them. He brought the dead body of a woman here once and, being in need of money, sold it to medical students at the old Charlotte Medical College for $12. He put the pine coffin in for good measure.

The policemen about the station who were on the job in Brown’s day will tell you that he was the slickest thief in the game. He was wiser than most of the bad men, and he was harder to catch. That's the reason he got away with a lot of things that he did.

“If I’d got caught every time I stole anything, I never woulder got off de chain gang,” he explained.

Once Brown was caught with 12 bolts of silk valued at $600. In court, he swore and got by with it, that he won the silks in a gambling game with unknown parties in High Point. He had sold them here to another negro and the cops had arrested that negro. When Brown came clear, the court returned the silks to him, and he sold them over again. He confessed many years later that they came from a local department store during stock-taking season and he had pulled the marks off, making identification impossible.

TOOK 32 HATS

He walked into Ed Mellon’s in broad daylight once and walked out with 32 panama hats while the clerks were busily engaged waiting on customers. He sold hats all over town. In fact, it looked as if half the negro population were wearing panama hats. But it took months to trace the theft down to “Misch.”

On another occasion, he broke into the old Chambers-Moody Company and stole over $700 in cash and checks. A rat terrier dog was kept in the store to warn a sleeper upstairs should burglars break in. Brown wrung the dog’s neck, made his haul and was a free man for 18 months. Detective Jim Johnson had a dull day and picked Brown up on suspicion. He had failed to take an 18-months-old check from his pocket and Detective Johnson thereby solved the mystery of the Chambers-Moody robbery. “Misch” revisited Captain Little’s camp for a stay of two years.

Brown worked as a youth for the family of the late W.W. Ward. This family practically raised him, he said. In his eagerness to see a circus unload one day when he was about 10 years old, his head came into collision with a freight engine. The railroad was sued and Brown got $3,000.

This money with interest was turned over to him when he reached 21. It took him three years to spend it, and he remembered that his last nickel went for a lunch in the East Trade Street Restaurant. But he lived high those three years, visiting all the big cities, drinking good liquor and riding within, rather than underneath, railway trains.

“Misch” was so successful in his chosen profession that he never found it necessary to obtain a job, which is saying a good deal for bad men around this town. He never had a desire to work in any line other than the one he chose early in life.

The cops kept getting “Misch” so frequently that they considered that day on which they failed to arrest him a “perfect day.” Every effort was made to get him on the chain gang for life, satisfied that this plan alone would solve half the town’s big robberies and relieve the law of much burden and expense.

WAS MADE JANITOR

Former Police Chief Horace Moore reformed “Misch.” The last time he came into court, the ex-chief called him aside, told him that he was so darned crooked that he could not get worse; consequently, he considered it possible that he might grow better. He offered him a job as police janitor, a position which would keep him constantly under the eyes of the police and make a long haul unnecessary in the event it should again fall to the lot of officers to bring him to the lock-up.

Not a man on the force believed that “Misch” would reform. He admits himself that the morning he reported for work he carried in two pockets a load of fountain pens. He fought the battle of his life that first morning on the job, endeavoring to decide whether to give up the fascinating, profitable profession of burglarizing and sneak-thieving and settle down and live the cut-and-dried life of a law-abiding citizen, or vice versa.

When he went home to dinner, he emptied his final collection of booty in a sewer and has followed the straight and narrow path since. He has proved of inestimable value to the policemen. He knows every negro crook in town, knows which crook did a particular job by the manner in which the job was performed, and knows the hang-out of many of the crooks.

From The Charlotte News, Sunday, September 25, 1921

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