“THIEVES” LATIN CODE

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 50, Issue 96, 3 February 1930, Page 6

“THIEVES” LATIN CODE

KEY IN HANDS OF POLICE, France lias now definite proof that what has been so often described in fiction as “thieves’ Latin’’ actually exists. Some nine or 10 months ago an alleged international thief was arrested at Pernambuco, and was found in possession of a notebook in which various Spanish words figured in one column with a translation into an unknown language opposite each. For months magistrates and detectives tried in vain to persuade the alleged criminal, Alberto Pinto, to reveal the meaning of tin’s strange dictionary, and at last lie lias been made to speak In a statement made before a Magistrate, says an overseas paper, lie has declared that his dictionary is one of an international language of crime drawn up as a result of a congress of criminals held in 1926 at Lerida. in Spain. This language is the criminals’ Lingua Franca. In explaining to the Magistrate how this congress came to be held and its own language established, he said that since international rogues found the police of the whole world working so closely together they in defence must have their own organisations and codes According to the prisoner’s account, tlie congress at Lerida represented pickpockets, railway thieves, hotel “rats,” jewel robbers, and forgers. Among those who attended were —always according to the prisoner’s statement — three Spaniards,two Portuguese, one Chilean, one Frenchman, two Greeks, four Englishmen, and four Americans. “Each member of the congress received a copv of the international criminal cede.” lie concluded, “and you now have mine.” This interesting document is now in the bands of a famous handwriting and code expert, Dr Locard, 'of Lyons, who is to decipher the whole dictionary of the criminals language and furnish a translation to the"police of the whole world.