Round Lake History

A story from Round Lake's past!

The 400 residents of Round Lake in Lake County last evening were celebrating the feat of an elderly bank cashier and several citizens who yesterday balked a holdup of the First State Bank in the Village and shot and captured one of the robbers. The celebration took the form of a search for a companion of the captured bandit who fled on foot while two others got away in an automobile. Even woman and children joined in the hunt. It seemed a perfect setup for a small town bank robbery when two shabbily clothed men entered the bank with their hands in their pockets at 9:35am.

Edwin C. Webber, the 60 year old cashier, was in the cage, and Miss Vilah Hart, bookkeeper, daughter of the bank president, John Hart., was in a rear office. They were alone and there was some $10,000 in cash on hand. One of the strangers asked Webber where they could get jobs. He told them he didn’t know and the man suddenly said: “This is a stick-up.” Webber mentally thanked the foresight of the bank officials in providing bullet-proof glass on the cages, tear-gas guns, a revolver and an alarm system. Then, he answered, tartly, “The hell it is, “and reached for the revolver.

Both bandits fired, but the glass and steel framework of the cages stopped their bullets. Webber stepped on a button, causing the alarm to sound in the street and in the shops of merchants who form the town’s volunteer guards. He pushed his revolver through a porthole and fired two shots as the bewildered robbers fled from the bank. The driver of the bandit car and a fourth man sped away to save themselves.

The two running from the bank fled in different directions. One of them, gun in hand, almost bumped into Michael Luby, a Village employee who was raking a garden plot across the street. “I had been reading about John Dillinger,” Luby related afterward. “I thought it must be one of that gang, so I lifted my rake and whacked him over the head with it as he passed.”