Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
did they have photo ID? since it was a paper society, how could they really know who you were? if a policeman questioned you, how could they positively ID you?
since everything back then was kept in files, what if you moved to another town or another state? how could they keep track of people?
what if you just used another name? also how safe was it to keep your money in the bank? what if somebody knew your info or your signature and tried to make a withdrawal and take your money?
it seems like a person could easily move to another town or state and start over and nobody would know their past.
Regular Joe's certainly didn't walk around with photo IDs. In bigger cities, the police simply had to take your word. In smaller cities the cops knew every body and were always weary of drifters.. Of course, if you were wanted by the police, then the police had photos of you.. I don't think big government was KEEPING Track of people the way they are today. You could freely move across the country without the government ever knowing or caring for that matter.
Banks were not necessarily the best place to keep your money but i do think you were safe from somebody else withdrawing your money. Probably safer then than you are now. Banks were small and there might be only a single bank for one town or a few smaller towns. The bank knew the folks who kept their money there and you couldn't just walk into the bank and withdraw someone elses money because the bank tellers and manager would KNOW you were not the person who that account belonged to.
A small town bank was not going to simply hand over money to someone they did not know or recognize.
I think a person could easily move to another town or state and start over back then but it would still take a while for them to become part of a community... still it probably happened more then than it does today.
Banking was relatively sophisticated in terms of transferring funds, etc. Bankers themselves kept pretty good records and had a system of controlled forms and stamps and official notifications, it just worked slower.
On a personal banker level, yeah much of it was via personal identification and/or official forms from the bank they would give you when you opened an account. Lack of technology was also a benefit in terms of the inability to easily duplicate the official looking and stamped forms that the banks used.
What was really confusing - the number of illiterate people during that age. Signatories could not sign there name, they were usually asked to "make there mark" - usually just a crude "X", sometimes with a literate witness to validate it.
It needs to be recognized that the society of a century ago didn't feature the mobility we know today. Most of the population lived via subsistence farming and/or stayed were they were. Travel over long distances for business purposes was rare, and the few who did so were often well know to those with whom they interacted on a regular basis.
Below is a link to another example with which I'm somewhat familiar due to a hobby interest:
Rail telegraphers and dispatchers were in demand until around 1915, when the nation's rail network reached its maximum size, so itinerants moved from job to job. But they had a union, and that union published a monthly "house organ" , which both tracked available jobs and provided some form of reference for reliable prospective employees.
People did "disappear" and re-start their lives. What you are missing though is that with no tv and no radio and no phones people interacted face to face almost constantly and in established towns the social pecking order and mores were VERY strict and entrenched. If a person came into a town and did not fit in and find a respectable place in the community, they would be told to leave. Tolerance for disruptive outsiders was nil and punishments were often extreme.
Lack of technology was also a benefit in terms of the inability to easily duplicate the official looking and stamped forms that the banks used.
As a trivia side note, banks were not the only institution to rely on elaborate stamps and seals. In WWII, the Germans occupied most of Europe and had a love affair with paper work governing everything.
Resistance groups and a-political black marketeers soon learned that even though Germany was technologically a very advanced nation, a surprisingly high number of Germans, especially older reservists on garrison duty - to say nothing of their local collaborators, in the 1940s were functionally illiterate.
These men relied very heavily on the "correct" papers having certain hard to forge stamps and seals. What the papers said really did not matter nearly as much as whether or not they had the right stamps. Resistance groups and black market types then spent a lot of time, effort and money tracking down artisans who could make convincing forgeries of the stamps etc.
did they have photo ID? since it was a paper society, how could they really know who you were? if a policeman questioned you, how could they positively ID you?
since everything back then was kept in files, what if you moved to another town or another state? how could they keep track of people?
what if you just used another name? also how safe was it to keep your money in the bank? what if somebody knew your info or your signature and tried to make a withdrawal and take your money?
it seems like a person could easily move to another town or state and start over and nobody would know their past.
First and foremost, there was no I.R.S., personal income tax or anything like it.
Secondly, very few people actually wrote and paid for things by check.
There was no electric company, no phone company, no cable t.v. etc.
MOST business was conducted face to face.
Banks would offer checking, but before funds were transferred, verifications were made as to signature, with the recipient of the check insuring that funds were in fact available and transfers made.
Lastly as to the Police and Sheriffs.... Truthfully, they did not care what name you used.
If a crime was committed and the person caught, the penalty would be extracted.
If a person made his "get away' then they would likely never be caught.
BUT, when they were trial were often quick, short and sharp.
Of course, witness crimes could often result in "wanted posters" so, regardless of the name used, there was often a remote chance of apprehension.
Remember also, that quite often simply crossing a state line would in effect allow an accused to avoid prosecution.
I cannot exactly recall but do remember reading about a NYC Police detective who compiled a photo-book of mugshots to ID gang members. Perhaps 1880s or so. Maybe have been sooner. In fact, I think it was as it was a documentary about the real Gangs of New York so perhaps as early as the 1860s. Talk about hardboiled faces!!
I cannot exactly recall but do remember reading about a NYC Police detective who compiled a photo-book of mugshots to ID gang members. Perhaps 1880s or so. Maybe have been sooner. In fact, I think it was as it was a documentary about the real Gangs of New York so perhaps as early as the 1860s. Talk about hardboiled faces!!
Would have to look it up but New York City dumped a huge trove of "mug shot" camera plates into the waters off Manhattan. This was back in the 1980's or so, cannot remember exactly when but read about it in the New York Times at the time. The plates were all from the 1800's and perhaps early 1900's (since they were plates and not film negatives) and those affected probably were long since in their graves.
did they have photo ID? since it was a paper society, how could they really know who you were? if a policeman questioned you, how could they positively ID you?
since everything back then was kept in files, what if you moved to another town or another state? how could they keep track of people?
what if you just used another name? also how safe was it to keep your money in the bank? what if somebody knew your info or your signature and tried to make a withdrawal and take your money?
it seems like a person could easily move to another town or state and start over and nobody would know their past.
Believe it or not even going back to the 1800's and early 1900's things were far more sophisticated than you think. Of course they didn't have the Internet or in some cases even the telephone or wire service, but things could be found out.
Laws were also different and or viewed so by the LE and or courts than today. If you were picked up for this or that and could not produce id that satisfied the police or a judge, you could be locked up until someone came down/could be found to identify you. If this meant say sending someone to your mother's house in Philly from NYC, so be it.
Handwriting experts have been around for centuries. When a check reached a bank and the clerk or whomever didn't like the signature they could compare it to what they had on file. That or send for someone from the bank in question (or send the document with a trusted person) to the drawing bank to verify.
You had detectives both private and agencies (such as the Pinkerton) that would travel all over the world to make "inquiries" about everything from a missing person to some man a father didn't like who was courting his daughter.
If you've read the book Dracula poor Jonathan Harker is dispatched from the safety of London across Europe to settle a business transaction with "The Count".
Traveler's checks have been around since the early 1700's and were how the wealthy or anyone else got money when traveling abroad. They were only recently supplanted by the growth of ATM debit cards used worldwide and credit cards. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveler%27s_cheque
Were things 100%? No of course not. The fact Jack The Ripper and hundreds of other persons who committed horrible crimes were never found proves it was easy to get "lost" if you tried hard enough.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
