Bill Miner was born in Bowling Green, Kentucky, in 1846. His real name was Arthur Allen Miller, but he disliked it and went by William or Bill. His background was unremarkable: his mother was a schoolteacher, his father a mining engineer. Little is known of his youth, though he was clearly an excellent horseman with a taste for adventure.
As a teenager, he worked as a mail courier in New Mexico during the Apache wars, crossing dangerous terrain to deliver letters. It was risky work, often life-threatening, but it paid well—around twenty dollars per letter. Using his skill on horseback, he delivered dozens safely and earned more money than he had ever known. He spent it freely on fine dining and clothes, trying to pass as an upper-class gentleman.
But the money was bound to run out, and to sustain his new lifestyle, he turned to crime while still in his teens. He began by stealing horses, which came naturally to him. Then he moved on to robbing merchants and breaking into homes in California, always earning a decent sum. But Miner wanted more, and so he took up stagecoach robbery with the help of accomplices.
Most of these robberies were successful, netting cash, bonds, gold dust, and other goods that often totaled thousands of dollars. But Miner was unlike other robbers. He was consistently polite, spoke in a soft tone, and frequently apologized for the inconvenience. This unusual manner earned him the nickname the Gentleman Bandit.
During one stagecoach robbery, he asked passengers to step outside with his gun in hand and said, “Hands up. ” The exact wording cannot be confirmed, but he is credited with coining the phrase that day—the first recorded use of that famous command. In 1866, at age twenty, he was arrested. Despite having committed numerous crimes by then, he was charged with only two counts of robbery and sentenced to four years at San Quentin State Prison in California.
After his release, he returned to robbing stagecoaches to maintain a high-quality lifestyle and mix with the upper classes. It did not last. Soon after, he was arrested again, sentenced, and returned to prison. From 1866 to 1901, Miner escaped prison five times and was released only twice, spending more than twenty-nine of the next thirty-five years behind bars.
In 1880, during one of his brief free spells, he teamed up with Bill Leroy to rob a stagecoach. The robbery itself went through, but word spread quickly. A mob formed and hunted the two men down. Leroy was caught and lynched.
Miner nearly shared his fate, but his quick thinking allowed him to slip away from the angry mob. His actions went unnoticed by the authorities, but not for long. In 1881, he was caught for another robbery and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. When he was finally released in 1901, the American West was a different place.
Bandits of his kind were on the decline. He briefly worked as an honest farmer and laborer, but soon realized this was not the life he wanted. He returned to crime. With stagecoaches becoming less common for transporting valuable goods, Miner had to adapt to robbing trains.
His first attempt was a failure, so he tried again on September 23, 1903. His target was an express train in Oregon. The job was a complete mess. Miner and his two henchmen had not taken necessary precautions.
One companion was wounded, another killed. Miner alone escaped unharmed—and empty-handed. He left Oregon and settled in British Columbia, Canada, living as a ranch owner under the alias George Edwards. He became well known in the local community and was liked by many.
But Miner quickly grew tired of the quiet cattle-raising life and began planning another train robbery. By 1904, he had new accomplices: Louis Kaku and Thomas Dunne. With a solid plan, they believed the robbery could bring in a nice sum of money. On September 10, the group stopped a train at Silverdale, British Columbia, about thirty-five kilometers east of Vancouver.
When the Canadian Pacific Railway’s Continental Express Number One came to a complete stop, the group boarded and made off with around $7,000 worth of gold dust, $1,000 in currency, and over $50,000 in US bonds. It was Canada’s first train robbery. The operation went smoothly, everything according to plan. They had their boat ready, crossed the Fraser River, and found their horses waiting on the other side.
They rode upstream and went their separate ways. The Canadian Pacific Railway, along with federal and provincial governments, offered a large sum of $11,500 to anyone who could catch the robbers. But the police knew little about the men behind the incident. The next morning, as police searched the area, Miner—posing as George Edwards—was having breakfast in Chilliwack, talking with detectives about the news from the night before.
For the next eighteen months, Miner lived peacefully as George Edwards, a kind old man popular within the local community. No one ever suspected he was the notorious Gentleman Bandit. Then he heard news of a train carrying huge amounts of cash and gold, headed for San Francisco and passing nearby. Seeing it as a golden opportunity, he roused his three-man team and prepared a strategy.
On May 8, 1906, Miner, Dunne, and Kaku held up the Canadian Pacific Railway’s Transcontinental Express Number 97 at Duck Station, a place now called Monte Creek near Kamloops. The robbery was a complete disaster. After boarding, they realized they had stopped the wrong train. Nothing of value was found.
They managed only $15 and some liver pills, which Miner picked up. Things went from bad to worse when the bandits noticed their horses had gone missing. They were forced to escape on foot and went into hiding. The local authorities were determined to catch them, believing this was the same group that had committed the robbery of 1904.
A reward of $15,000 was offered for the capture of the three men. Provincial and federal governments, Canadian Pacific Railway detectives, local cowboys, and others worked together in what remains the largest manhunt in the history of British Columbia. The bandits stayed hidden for almost a week. On May 14, they were found at a camp near Douglas Lake.
Miner and Kaku surrendered without a fight, but Dunne ran. An officer quickly drew his gun and shot him in the leg. The outlaws were taken to Kamloops, and on June 1 they were tried and convicted. As the group’s leader, Miner received a life sentence, to be served at British Columbia’s Penitentiary in New Westminster.
Hundreds of supporters from the local town came to protest, refusing to believe that George Edwards—a kind, popular gentleman—could possibly be one of the most-wanted outlaws in the West. A year later, on August 8, 1907, Miner escaped from prison. Police patrolled the Vancouver area searching for him, but Miner had outsmarted them and fled to Colorado. From 1907 to 1911, he lived peacefully as before, but once his money ran out in 1911, he returned to banditry with a small group by his side.
He committed his first train robbery there and was caught within days, sentenced to twenty years in the state’s penitentiary. Again Miner behaved well and escaped, but within a year he was back in prison. Restless, he escaped again in 1912. He made his way to a swamp and hid in an old boxcar nearby, but he was found and taken back to prison for the final time.
Bill Miner died in Georgia State Penitentiary of gastritis on September 2, 1913, a result of dirty water he drank while trying to escape. His epitaph reads, as it rightly should: “Bill Miner, last of the old-time outlaws. “