The master thief
In one of his many articles about rakers, taters and other thugs, Jeppe Aakjær came across a legendary figure named Chr. Rasmussen, who lived in Skiveegnen in the 1860s and was nicknamed “The Master Thief”, but Jeppe Aakjær also tells of other shady characters of the time who made their way in the criminal world in the area.
Rønbjerg racketeers
One of the officials who had the perhaps dubious pleasure of meeting the Master Thief was district administrator E. Falbe Hansen in Holstebro. In the Hardsyssel Aarbog from the early 1900s, he wrote in his memoirs about the spread of racketeering in the area in the early 1860s and about his encounter with master thief Chr. Rasmussen. At that time, when people talked about racketeers in Skiveegnen, most people thought they were talking about Rønbjerg racketeers, so many of the racketeers who came to the attention of the authorities probably had their origins in or around Rønbjerg itself, falbe also believed that there were always Rønbjerg racketeers in jails in both Holstebro and Skive, and if there was a report of theft, assault or similar, suspicion always fell on the local racketeers, and the spotlight was directed at them. In the small parishes around the area, the parish bailiffs would shake in their boots when they were ordered to investigate suspected rascals. Things got really bad with the ravages of the rascals in the years 1862-1864, so the authorities began searches and outreach activities to put an end to the vermin. In 1863, a commission was set up because the “dangerousness” and “audacity” of the crimes had become so serious that the state granted two chief assessors (prosecutors) from Copenhagen to curb crime in the area. The two gentlemen were to cover the areas around both Holstebro and Skive, but were headquartered in Holstebro, where the above-mentioned bailiff E. Falbe Hansen was a clerk.
Dangerous racketeers
The so-called “dangerousness” consisted, among other things, in the fact that the criminal raiders used both horses and wagons when they raided lonely farms and plundered them. They were often equipped with firearms and long knives, as when some racketeers entered a remote farm and attacked the husband and wife in the dead of night, tied them up and dragged the wife to the oven, where they threatened her with knives and firearms to tell where in the house the couple had hidden their money. According to reports, they were Rønbjerg robbers, and they even lit the oven and threatened to throw the wife into the flames if she did not reveal the hiding place.
Skive Town Hall
Falbe says that Skive’s Town Hall, which probably functioned as both a town hall and a jail, housed two jail cells, “Tivoli” and “Alhambra”, so you can imagine what the two rather exotic names referred to. According to Falbe, “mild” punishment such as chains and straitjackets were used and “secret beatings” were handed out. In addition, the detainees were put on a “narrow diet”. These means were probably used to force confessions, and as Falbe says, these abuses were a “common” way of dealing with rakers. He also admits that he himself regularly used caning against racketeers for even the smallest offenses, but he also had a colleague who was particularly skilled in the art of delivering precise “rattan blows” (with a cane). Falbe also had little respect for his court colleagues in Skive, including the county bailiff himself, who, in his opinion, did not show due respect to the accused criminals in court. It was so bad that the accused even called the sheriff and the other officials in the court in Skive “sheepheads”. The reason why Aakjær had included assistant judge Falbe’s memories of the persecution of the region’s racketeers was that Falbe had personally met the real protagonist of this article, namely the master thief Chr. Rasmussen, who we will return to later with Aakjær’s information about him.
The meeting with the master thief
Deputy Prosecutor Falbe’s meeting with Chr. Rasmussen took place after Chr. Rasmussen had been arrested and convicted of several crimes in Skiveegnen in 1866, which will be discussed later in the article. After Rasmussen had served his sentence in Viborg Tugthus, he was about to be released in the late 1860s. Around this time, Falbe was sitting peacefully in the sheriff’s office in Holstebro one dark evening, doing his office work, when a “transport guard” suddenly knocked on the door and announced that he had brought a prisoner from Viborg Tugthus who was about to be released, but the prisoner would be held in custody until the formalities were in order. As the detention center was apparently located elsewhere, in connection with the town hall, Falbe asked the transport guard to take the prisoner there. The guard was very upset and apologized that he was tired and didn’t know where the town hall was. Falbe took pity on the guard’s excuses and offered to put the prisoner on a bench in the office. Falbe would then arrange for the prisoner to be taken into custody himself. Falbe had probably been busy looking through his papers and had obviously not paid much attention to the prisoner sitting on the bench at the back of the room, but suddenly Falbe felt a hand on his shoulder and heard an ominous voice saying that he had a bone to pick with the clerk. Falbe was so startled that he jumped up from his chair, and he was in for an even bigger scare when he discovered the powerful and threatening figure to whom the voice belonged, the master thief Chr. Rasmussen. Falbe immediately screamed for help, while he himself managed to back the prisoner onto the bench, where he managed to hold him until the farmhand and another helper arrived. Together, the three of them brought Chr. Rasmussen to the city jail. Falbe’s reaction when he realized who he was dealing with could indicate that the Master Thief was feared as a dangerous man – not least by Falbe, who in 1866 had helped to convict Chr. Rasmussen in Skive. In his memoirs, Falbe praises himself for being able to pacify the feared thief and robber in the first place. We now turn our attention to Aakjær and his more historical interpretation of the Master Thief and his henchmen.
“Long fingering”
Chr. Rasmussen was born in 1830, but where is not stated. In 1851, at the age of twenty-one, he was punished for the first time, and in 1861 he was imprisoned in Skive Arrest and charged with “long fingering” in connection with the theft of an unspecified “bell”. However, he had two co-conspirators named Anders Gammelgaard and Ingeborg Jørgensdatter, but since the female party in the crime took all the blame, Chr. Rasmussen was acquitted of the theft. Anders Gammelgaard, who was also acquitted, was so grateful for the acquittal that he later married the convicted Ingeborg Jørgensdatter out of pure “chivalry”. From 1865, it seems that Chr. Rasmussen and his accomplices really got to grips with their mischief in Salling, as there were reports of as many as 39 thefts or robberies, and that Chr. Rasmussen’s gang included up to 50 henchmen. The entire region was in an uproar, and the people of Salling in particular feared constant visits from the Master Thief and his gang, and they believed that the authorities had more or less lost out to the “bandits”, who seemed to have virtually free rein. It should also be remembered that even though some of the farmers lived in villages at the time, farms were far apart and it was dark in the countryside, so people’s fear of this gang in Salling and the surrounding area was understandable, as two events in which Chr. Rasmussen was involved also testify.
The baking oven
On September 21, 1865, Chr. Rasmussen and his gang had moved their activities to Ejsing, where they had entered a farm in the dark where 72-year-old Niels Jensen lived with his wife. The man had been tied hand and foot, while the wife’s hands were tied and she was led to the house’s oven. The oven was lit and now the poor wife was threatened with being thrown into the fire if she did not reveal where the house’s assets were hidden. The threat of being burned alive was never carried out, but it is not known whether the criminals got away with a profit. This incident that Aakjær has found here is reminiscent of Falbe’s earlier account of the woman who was also threatened with a baking oven, so there may have been something to it.
Long knives in Hvidbjerg
Later in the year, Chr. Rasmussen was at it again, on December 15th to be exact. This time, Chr. Rasmussen was joined by another of the main men in the rascally company. His name was Laust Michaelsen and he was 13 years younger than Chr. Rasmussen, but was considered worse than the Master Thief when it came to criminal deeds. Late at night, the two appeared with some henchmen in Hvidbjerg, just west of Skive, and entered the home of farmer Niels Skipper, where they attacked him and his sister. The siblings were both tied up and threatened with “faggots” and “long knives”, while the house was searched for valuables. However, the assailants had done the deed without a host, as the house also contained a small boy who managed to sneak out of the house unnoticed and cleverly found a ladder and put it in front of the door before rushing for help. Help quickly arrived in the form of a “numerous” crew, and when this help corps suddenly stood inside the door of the ransacking thieves, it was so numerically superior in strength that the criminals chose to draw their weapons. All the assailants were taken to Skive Arrest and detained here, where they could now wait to be interrogated before going to court. Already during the interrogations, names of henchmen must have surfaced, because within a few days, another 12-13 members of Chr. Rasmussen and Laust Michaelsen’s gang were arrested in connection with the case. You can’t help but think of the resourceful and brave little boy who should get a lot of the credit for this mass arrest.
Judgment and punishment
The people of Skive were now waiting for the sheriff to ensure that justice was done for the many suspected criminals who had ravaged the area for several years and made people afraid, but they apparently did not trust the sheriff in Skive to finish the job, so at the request of a local MP, Skive appointed one of the previously mentioned court assessors from Holstebro to lead the trial. When this assessor took the stand as prosecutor at the court in Skive on January 7, 1866, he managed to solve over 200 crimes in a short time, with 46 defendants who were sentenced to harsh punishments, including several years in prison or a house of correction. This also happened to the main man and master thief Chr. Rasmussen, who served his sentence in Viborg Tugthus, before he met prosecutor Falbe upon his release in Holstebro. After the many convictions here in 1866, the criminal activities of the racketeers in the area seemed to have subsided, so people could sleep peacefully at night again. The war of 1864 had probably also contributed to reducing crime in general in the country, so even thieves had something else to think about when the country was flooded with German and Austrian soldiers.
Poorhouse
Nothing is known about the life of master thief Chr. Rasmussen after his meeting with assistant prosecutor Falbe that evening in Holstebro, where he was to be released after serving his sentence in Viborg Tugthus. He had probably left the area, but with his criminal past and the label of a rascal, it would no doubt have been difficult to make a living, unless he had found a job as a night man in one of the country’s market towns. In any case, there are no court records or similar evidence that he resumed his criminal career, but perhaps he had gone underground and continued his shady deeds – without being discovered. On the other hand, we know that two other of the master thief’s henchmen, who were also convicted at the court in Skive in 1866, stayed in the area. These were Peter Chr. Hansen, who ended up in Vinde Poorhouse, and Jens Andersen, who came to live in Breum Poorhouse. It should be added that in both the 18th and 19th centuries, the parish poorhouses often housed people who had the status of scavengers and, as shown in previous Aakjær articles, were a great burden for the parishes. This was the case in Vinde, for example, where the night watchman of Skive market town also lived for a time.
“Fanden pine” – poor relief
The case of the Master Thief and his many henchmen, coupled with the fact that the Skive region was already known for its many racketeers and other “thugs”, had also caught the attention of the national daily press, and the newspapers even had the audacity to claim that the many thefts and other crimes were due to poverty among the region’s population and especially Skive and Sallings’ lack of “poor relief”. This poor relief meant that the individual parishes and market towns were required by the government to support people who were unable to support themselves due to illness, old age or other reasons. The latter category included the rascals, whom no honorable person would take in their bread unless it involved working as a night man (and former executioner). Therefore, those rascals who chose to settle in the region, but could not find work, were also entitled to support.
Naturally, the parishes – and especially the rural parishes – looked askance at these rakers, who often filled the poorhouses. In the countryside, most of the people who sat on parish councils and poor commissions were farmers, and they were traditionally not happy about having to shake money out of the bag for these vulnerable people in the poorhouses, so when the daily press took the liberty of claiming that in Skive and Salling they should give more money to poor relief, it hit a sore spot with the local parish council chairmen. Therefore, the Salling residents retaliated in the local Skive newspaper, claiming that the poverty of the area’s residents was due to “the bottle”, i.e. that the poor drank, and that no one should come and say anything about their poor relief services in Salling. “Damned if you’re going to talk about old age support. I see more than 50 parish council members’ eyes on stalks, aimed at me like a gay race,” as one parish council chairman put it when the subject of higher benefits came up. With this attitude, the national press was perhaps a little right in saying that there was a shortage of modern poor relief in the area. Aakjær also lets it be known that Salling’s poor relief could be better and ironizes a little about the local farmers who can’t sleep at night for fear that they would have to pay more to the poor, or worse, that “Bolshevism” (communism) would knock on the door. Aakjær wrote this article in 1926, when the spectre of the Russian Revolution still lurked in the background.
Cake ironing and life imprisonment
To return to the rascals and their possible motive for stealing, the daily press had highlighted in its attack on Salling’s poor relief organization that in the case against Chr. Rasmussen’s gang of thieves, the approximately 200 thefts had only brought the thieves values corresponding to a ridiculously small amount (1100 Rdl.). If the thieves still resorted to violence of a particularly dangerous nature in connection with their robberies, it must have been because hunger and need had forced them to. Seen with today’s eyes and also Aakjær’s eyes in the early 1900s, it is also thought-provoking that the local Resen raider Christoffer Christoffersen was convicted in 1786 of stealing a horse blanket and a dung rope, among other things, and was therefore punished with ironing (whipping until the skin fell off), put in chains and punished with forced labor for life at Copenhagen Fortress (Aakjær in Skivebogen 1925). This happened only about 70 years before Chr. Rasmussen and his gang were convicted. Christoffer Christoffersen’s motive for his modest theft was probably also hunger and need like the above-mentioned racketeers, and to Christoffer Christoffersen’s excuse should be added that he did not touch a human being during the commission of his “crime”, which today is probably classified as simple theft. In 1786, such a crime carried a life sentence! Against this background, the Master Thief seems to have gotten off cheaply with 3-4 years in Viborg Penitentiary, considering that several of his crimes included violence and threats of violence (robbery).
Sources
Jeppe Aakjær: Chr. Rasmussen og hans Tyvebande, Skivebogen 1926.