Montreal earned the title of bank robbery capital of Canada thanks in part to sensationalistic newspaper coverage that made the thieves look sorta awesome, as reporters gave robbers nicknames such as The Gay Nineties bandit, the Kissing Bandits, and The Garbage Collectors.
Take the case of the Wingfield brothers, Albert, 29, and Kenneth Wingfield, 32, pictured above, who were dubbed The Kissing Bandits during their crime spree in the early 1950s.
The brothers were nabbed on 28 February 1951 and charged with a half-dozen armed robberies of Montreal grocery stores, drug stories and banks.
Although the brothers were just low-lived thieves, news reports dubbed them the kissing bandits because during one of their earlier heists in Rosemont, a $3,000 job, the duo stopped and kissed a woman customer.
Their female accomplice on one of the later bank robberies, Louise Montembeault, 23, grabbed the purse out of a customer's hands during one of the jobs and faced additional charges for that theft.
Albert had prompted less salutary write-ups in his earlier crimes while Kenneth appears to have been less-criminally inclined. The Wingfields were sentenced to life in prison for their troubles, while Louise got three years, claiming that the brothers had drugged her before the robbery.
The Garbage Collectors earned their name by masquerading as garbage men when they struck a Provincial Bank of Canada branch at 8501 St. Denis, making off with $10,000 on 15 March 1951, forcing seven employees to lie on the floor.
The Gay Nineties bandit earned his nickname by wearing a handlebar moustache and sideburns while grabbing $1,500 from a Bank of Nova Scotia at Peel and St. Catherine on 8 February 1951.
Those two robberies appear to have gone unsolved.
The string of nine robberies over six weeks of 1951 became front page news and surely helped newspaper sales as well as creating employment for police holdup squads. The Montreal bank robbery trend lasted for decades thereafter.
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