Gold heists in Malton may be a bit of thing, it turns out.

A few weeks ago, considering the recent gold theft at Pearson Airport in April, we recounted the story of a gold heist in 1952. Thanks to information shared by an online reader, we learned of another, earlier theft of gold from the Sheaffer Pen Company in Malton on October 17, 1947. Here is the story, as best we have been able to piece together.

But first, a little backstory on pens.

The Sheaffer Pen Company was founded in 1913 by Walter A. Sheaffer in Fort Madison, Iowa to produce his revolutionary invention of a lever-filling fountain pen. The Sheaffer Pen Company rapidly expanded, and came to Canada in the early 1920s. In 1927 they were manufacturing and distributing their products from a facility on Front Street in Toronto. By 1929 they were located at 169-173 Fleet Street in Toronto, with plans in the works for further expansion. It is uncertain when they came to call Malton home, in a facility along Airport Road, south of Derry Road – it could have been in 1938, following the death of Walter Sheaffer, or in the 1940s. In December of 1946 a construction worker – Ralph Argue - was killed on the job at the Sheaffer Pen Company in Malton during an expansion of the facility. At the time of the 1947 robbery at the Malton plant, W.V. Saunders had been appointed as the new company president only two weeks prior.

On October 17, 1947, two armed thieves laid in wait outside the Sheaffer Pen Company facility in the early morning hours. Around 3 am, night watchman Ernest Mann was making his rounds, having just left the main factory to head over to the storage building. As soon as he exited the main building, the two perpetrators pounced. They bound his wrists and ankles with tape, and covered his eyes, forced him into a chair, and then taped him to the chair. The criminals then had free run of the facility. The security guard, although immobilized, could hear what was happening. From the sounds he deduced that the original pair of thieves had been joined by two others.

Suddenly there was a deafening explosion – the robbers blew open the safes in the vault, setting off the sprinkler system in the process. Once the doors to the safe were blown off, the thieves used crowbars and a sledgehammer to break open the safe. After about two hours at the job, they made off with more than $25,000 worth of gold and iridium. One newspaper estimate put the value at $40,000 worth of gold and precious metals.

After the robbers left with their spoils, the guard managed to free himself and call the provincial police constable Kit Still. Upon arrival at the company, it was found that the robbers had left behind their implements of destruction, but there were no clues as to their identity. The guard had not seen their faces as they were masked and could not identify their voices clearly. He was also not certain of the number of individuals involved, and he believed there were four men.

Provincial Police Chief Inspector Albert Ward was assigned to the case. A $1000 reward was offered, but there was little hope that the gold and precious metals would be found, or the perpetrators caught. And from what we can tell from historic newspapers, they never were, and loot was never recovered.

In 1954, the Sheaffer Pen Company moved to a new facility in Goderich, with their former plant on Airport Road being taken over by the expansion of A.V. Roe Canada.

If reading about historic crimes whets your appetite for more, Heritage Mississauga is excited to announce that our latest book, Mississauga Confidential: Murder, Scandal and Crime from the City’s Darker Side by Bryan Ho and Nicole Mair, will be launched at our Annual General Meeting on May 31, 2023. Contact Heritage Mississauga at info@heritagemississaug.org for more information on the book and on the AGM.