The Daily Dispatch: December 20, 1865., [Electronic resource]

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Heavy robbery at the Arlington House — a gentleman and his wife Drugged.

--On last Sunday night, between 10 and 3 o'clock, a bold and successful robbery was perpetrated at the Arlington House, Colonel William H. Fry, proprietor, on the corner of Main and Sixth streets. While Mr. James M. Byers and his wife were in bed asleep, the room was entered through one of the windows, and his pantaloons, which he had thrown on the lounge near the bed on retiring, were robbed of about nine hundred and seventy-five dollars in greenbacks and two hundred and fifty dollars in gold. On the lounge, over his other clothes, Mr. Byers had laid his overshirt on retiring. This was divested of two gold buttons, which were in the bosom, after which the shirt was thrown aside and the money abstracted from the pockets of the pantaloons. Two gold watches--one lying on the bureau and the other in Mr. Byers's watch pocket — were left untouched. There can be no doubt but that chloroform was first administered to the sleeping occupants of the room before the theft was perpetrated. Mrs. Byers, for the past six weeks, has been an invalid, suffering from a disease which called her up every half hour during the night, and Mr. Byers has heretofore been so easily to wake that no person could enter his room without arousing him. On the night of the robbery both slept soundly, and only waked when they were called by the servant to take the cars for their home, in Washington county. The police have been furnished with a description of the money stolen, and every means is being used to ferret the guilty parties out.