This piece of s*it- Alexander Keith Jr. He was a spy for the Confederate States, but that’s not what made him a super-villain. Not even his attempt to send clothes infected with yellow fever to northern cities.
What this guy did was so much worse. See, he was short on money, so he had a great idea- take out insurance on a ‘shipment’ of caviar, but actually fill the crates with a time bomb that would explode once it’s out at sea, killing everyone but letting him claim the money for his ‘losses’.
And his plan was close to working too. When the crates were being loaded up on ship in Germany, one of them got accidentally dropped and exploded, killing 80 people.
“A mushroom-shaped column of smoke rose approximately 200 meters above the harbor. Everywhere people were crying and whimpering beside ruins. The entire pier was covered in soot: it was like the gateway to hell.” At the time, the deed was called the “crime of the century.”
When he saw that his plan had failed he went to his room and shot himself. But he couldn’t even get that right, and died in agony only one week later.Alexander Keith Jr. was an American Civil War spy for the Confederate States of America. He used a time bomb to attempt to destroy the ship Mosel for insurance fraud. Keith was born in 1827 in Caithness, Scotland, immigrating to Halifax when he was a small boY.
Keith was born in 1827 in Caithness, Scotland, immigrating to Halifax when he was a small boy. The nephew of Alexander Keith, founder of the Alexander Keith’s brewery, Keith worked for a time as a clerk in his uncle’s brewery.
Keith became a secret agent for the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War, acting mostly as a blockade runner and courier. He was involved with Luke Blackburn in an infamous plot to send clothes infected with yellow fever to northern cities in the United States.
In 1865, he swindled his associates-in-crime and fled to St. Louis, Missouri, settling finally on the prairie. There, he married Cecelia Paris, a milliner’s daughter from St. Louis.
Hunted down by one of his victims, he fled again with Cecelia to Germany, where they lived the high life in Dresden and Leipzig, hobnobbing with wealthy socialites and Saxon generals under the assumed name of William King Thomas. When the couple began to run out of money, Keith concocted a plot to blow up passenger ships and collect the insurance money.
This led to a major catastrophe in Bremerhaven, in December 1875 when one of his bombs accidentally went off on a dock, killing eighty people. At the time, the deed was known as the “crime of the century. Keith was aboard another ship at the time and was aware of the premature detenation of his time bomb, and the massive carnage. He went to his suite in the ship he was on and shot himself. He died in a week’s time.”
After the tragedy was revealed as a murder/insurance scam on a large scale, the disappearance of other ships were looked into to see if Keith and his possible associates were involved. One was the disappearance of the SS City of Boston which vanished in January 1870.
Steve Ramsey