London's Bicentennial (Snippet 43)

 The Kidnapping of John Labatt - 1934
  If you search for old news about London, you will find many mentions of this event. Over three days in August 1934, newspaper readers wanted to know what had happened to this wealthy beer baron.

You will notice that in Nome the Dionne quintuplets are mentioned and the articles provide another example of words spelled differently in British/Canadian and American English - kidnapped/kidnaped.

This is what the front page of the London Evening Free Press looked like on Aug. 14, 1934.

  It is found on the website of the Archives and Special Collections at the Western Libraries. See, Labatt: A Closer Look, from which the following is copied:

  "The fact that the Labatt brewery prospered during prohibition when so many other breweries failed made John S. Labatt a target for kidnappers. Kidnapping was common during the darkest days of the Great Depression. Kidnappers targeted people who could command a “king’s ransom,” and few had prospered more than the beer barons who had survived prohibition. In 1934, John S. Labatt was one of the wealthiest brewers in Canada. At a time when many across the nation could not even afford the gas to run their cars, John Sackville was chauffeured around in a stately black limousine.

   On August 14, 1934, three kidnappers pulled John Sackville from his car on a secluded gravel road just outside of London and ordered him to write a note to his brother. “Dear Hugh,” John wrote, “do as these men have instructed you… and don’t go to the police.“ On the other side of the note, the gang’s leader, Michael McCardell, a sharp-featured man of forty-two who had lost his index finger in a shoot-out with police, wrote: “We are holding your brother for $150,000 ransom. Go to Toronto immediately and register at the Royal York Hotel… You will know me as Three-fingered Abe.”

   For three days, John Labatt remained blindfolded and chained near Lake Muskoka. When the kidnapping became front-page news, the bandits panicked and agreed to let Labatt go if he promised to pay them $25,000. At 12:30 am on Friday August 17, John Labatt was dropped off at the corner of Vaughan Road and St. Clair Avenue in Toronto, just a few miles northwest of the Royal York Hotel, where Hugh Labatt was stationed. John Labatt was free."
[The author of the above is Matthew J. Bellamy.]

Sources: 
  For additional ones, see the Wikipedia entry for, John Sackville Labatt, where this one is found: "Three Fingered Abe and the Labatt Kidnapping."

Postscript:
   There is still a Labatt's brewery in London, but it is no longer Canadian-owned. The oldest baseball park is also in London and it is Labatt Mermorial Park. See Snippet 11.