(fl. late 19th century-1930s), bank teller. (spelling also Hermann) Herman Von Metzke, a bank teller at the Merchants’ Bank, Lancaster, was sleeping in his room at the bank, doubling as an armed guard, as bank tellers were commonly expected to do at the time, on the night of 25/26 April 1905, when 4 robbers with revolvers broke into the bank. In the resulting fight, Von Metzke was wounded, but succeeded in shooting at the intruders with his revolver, and driving them away; the body of one of them, killed by Von Metzke’s shot, was found nearby. At the coroner’s inquest, Von Metzke was found to have acted correctly in the shooting. The dead robber was buried in the potter’s field section of St. Andrew’s cemetery, South Lancaster. The robber had registered at a hotel as J. Dixon. Unidentified otherwise at the time of burial, there was a report later that he had really been Thomas Chambers of Harriston, Ont., who had served a term in Joliette Penitentiary. The bank was said to have given Von Metzke a reward of $10,000–an immense sum for the time and place–but by another and slightly later report, the reward was $1000 and six months’ holidays. It is good to know that these claims are not wholly fiction, for they can be documented to the extent that the bank’s records show that Von Metzke was granted a $1000 bonus and an “extended leave of absence.” The citizens of Lancaster gave him a gold watch and chain. He is said also at this time to have become engaged to a girl from Lancaster.
At the time of this incident, it was remembered in the press that in Jan. 1897 a clerk called McLaughlin had fatally shot a man who was breaking into Alexander Leclair’s store at North Lancaster. A young bank clerk at Maxville at this time, by the name of R. L. Guselle, also had to sleep at his bank, armed in his case with two revolvers. He describes in his interesting memoirs how, on hearing of the Von Metzke incident, he asked for and obtained the assistance of a watchdog.
Transferred in Oct. 1905 to Montreal, half a year after his Lancaster brush with death, Von Metzke was afterwards transferred to Glencoe, Ont., where he was stationed by 1906 and remained to 1912. By 1936, when he retired from his career of many years with the Merchants’ Bank and its successor the Bank of Montreal, he had been a bank manager at Renfrew, Preston, Hespeler, Toronto and Walkerville. His date and place of death have not been discovered.
Glengarry News 28 April-9 June 1905 (main story repr. in Ross, Lancaster, 256-257), Cornwall Standard 28 April & 5 May 1905 * Archives, Bank of Montreal, head office, Montreal (incorporates Merchants’ Bank records) (QF) * Eileen Fourney, “The Founding of the Village of Lancaster,” GN 13 June 1984 * Old Boys 1906 [144]: picture of bank building, history of bank, story of Von Metzke * newspaper reports 26 April-1 May 1905 (from Montreal Star?) repr Highland Heritage 2:2 (1980) 75-83 * MS memoirs of R. L. Guselle in archives of the Bank of Nova Scotia