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Brooklyn Standard Union, January 15, 1931

'Bum' Rodgers, on Life Term,
Hangs Self in Clinton Cell

A criminal from he time he was nine years old and a product of the gutter and known as "Bum" because even in times of prosperity, he refused to pay heed to his personal appearance, John J. Rodgers, whose desperate career gained him much notoriety, is dead today in Clinton Prison, Dannemora, N. Y., where he took his own life by hanging himself in his cell.

Bum Rodgers, who seemed to have a genius for obtaining paroles on his numerous sentences spent most of his few free years around Manhattan, seldom crossing into Brooklyn in his criminal forays. At the time of his death, he was "in solitary", where he had been most of the time since his return to prison in 1926 after pleading guilty to a charge of violating the Sullivan law.

Rodgers was serving out a ten-year sentence for burglary, but in 1935 he would have begun serving a life sentence as a fourth offender. From 1904, according to his record, until 1920, Rodgers was out of jail only four years. But in that time he carved a record of desperate holdups, burglaries, assaults and other criminal activities that has seldom been equaled.

His best known exploit was his escape, while being conducted to prison, at the 125th Street railway station December 14, 1925. With a keeper named Beckwith, Rodgers boarded a train at Grand Central. As the train pulled into 125th Street, two men in the seat behind felled Beckwith with an iron bar and held the passenger at bay, while they fled with the prisoner.

Rodgers was born up in Harlem on 113th Street, between Lexington and Third Avenues, and while still a young boy became a member of the car barn gang. He was at one time of friend of such characters as Gerald Chapman and Dutch Anderson. Killer Cunliffe, leader of the Hudson Dusters, was one of his pals. But when he was finally captured for the last time in a squalid Bronx tenement in 1926, Bum Rodgers was without a dime and without a friend — deserted because of the many times he had double-crossed his friends.

The crook, whose surly face was familiar to thousands of detectives and policemen, was found dangling from a rope which he made from a torn shirt. A guard discovered the body. Rodgers had fastened one end of the rope to the ceiling of the cell, then kicked a stool from under him.

The life-long "hard guy" couldn't "stand the gaff".

Rodgers' escape in 1925 occurred during the return trip after he was taken to New York City to testify at a trial. When he was re-captured almost a year later, he was sent to Sing Sing Prison, instead of Auburn, and from there was transferred to Clinton, perhaps better known as Dannemora Prison. During his eleven months as a fugitive, Rodgers was blamed for several robberies, including one at Hewlett-Woodmere National Bank in Woodmere, Long Island, and also the murder of a man in Newark, New Jersey..

In the 1920s, the New York City police department published an information bulletin to help policemen and detectives spot wanted criminals. It was like a "Who's Who", complete with photographs and short biographies.

Bum Rodgers was one of 33 criminals included. The description of him began, "Escaped from a prison guard while en route to Auburn prison", and ended with "age 33 years, 5 feet 10 inches, 143 pounds, slim build, chestnut hair, brown eyes, deep pit marks on face, oval scar center of throat."

The New York Sun (October 7, 1926) added:

"If you should happen to see a person living up to this description, don't take him by the arm to the nearest policeman — who may be a mile or two away — but simply hit him over the head or beat it, for safety's sake — your safety — for John J. Rodgers, alias Bum Rodgers, alias John Hughes, also wanted in New Jersey for the brutal murder of a Newark lumber merchant last Monday night, will stop at nothing."

Final note: Edward Beckwith, the prison guard beaten and tied up in 1925 during Bum Rodgers escape from a train, was killed on duty five years later when he was stabbed by an inmate in the Auburn prison mess hall.
 
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