FRENCH ACTRESS AND AUSTRALIAN BURGLAR

Auckland Star, Volume XXXII, Issue 129, 1 June 1901, Page 5 (Supplement)

FRENCH ACTRESS AND AUSTRALIAN BURGLAR

A BLOODTHIRSTY BUT CHIVALROUS HOUi-EBREAKER.

(From. Our London Correspondent.}

LONDON, April 19.

Cordiality between French and English is not likely to be promoted by the latest encounter between citizens of those countries. Madame Louise Kolb, who wast 39 and comely, and who was some time ago one of the attractions of the Palais Royal and Renaissance Theatres, left the stage and retired into private life, as "a generous protector had assured her a comfortable and brilliant existence." She was living In a luxurious flat at Passy, dressed with taste, wore some costly jewels, and had horses, carriages, and a motor-car at her disposal. Last Friday night she had a little dinner party at her flat on the second floor, and a doctor, the last of her friends, departed just before midnight. The servant had already retired to her chamber on the sixth floor, so Madame Kolb was alone in the flat. She secured the front door by turning two special locks and putting up the chair, and went to bed. At 3 o'clock in the morning she was awakened by the click of an instrument in the keyhole. She turned up the electric light and saw to her horror a strongly-built man in a shabby frock coat and black soft felt hat, whose face was covered by a crape mask. Shrieking for help, she darted towards the window which overlooked the street to summon aid, but before she could get there the ruffian gripped her by the throat and banged her on the head with a long sausage-shaped bag filled with sand. When this burst he resorted to a still more murderous weapon, a stout strip of indiarubber with a steel ball (encased in the skin of a mandarin orange) attached to the end. After a few blows this slipped, and hastily picking up a heavy bronze vase he battered his unfortunate victim all over the head with such violence that portions of her hair and scalp were afterwards found adhering to the vuse. Madame Kolb struggled pluckily, dragging her assailant from one side of the room to the other in her effort to escape him. This only enraged him the more, and seizing a tumbler he dashed It on her face and with the jagged stump scored and gashed her head and face with murderous wounds, until she fell on the floor fainting.

Meanwhile her screams and the noise of the struggle had awakened the tenants of the first flat above, and the hall porter had summoned the police, who with the concierge entered the flat. Madame Kolb thinking that her assailant had returned again faintly said, "Have mercy on me, 1 Implore you." When the concierge asked her where the burglar had hidden himself, Madame Kolb with difficulty pointed to the dressing-room. Here, on turning up the light, the police found him quietly seated on a chair, with his coat off, his collar torn, his waistcoat and trousers wet with blood. He was unconcernedly washing the wound in his right hand that he himself had sustained from the broken tumbler.

He remained mute until be was taken to the police statiou, when to the Interpreter lie said that his name was Edward Smith, and that he was born in London in 1830. "I went there," he continued, "with the Intention of robbing, but not of committing murder. I only meant to stun Madame Kolb If she awoke. I hid In the flat, and waited until she was sound asleep. Then I took her.keys and opened her desk, but finding nothing there i turned my attention to another piece of furniture. When she woke up I struck hen" The prisoner refused to give any further explanation. He would not.say how he had thought of the robbery or how he had got into the apartment. "1 shall only speak," he repeated, "in the prestnee of my lawyer," expressing a wish that the British Embassy would provide him with one. When told that he might be condemned to death he replied, coolly, that he did not care, and that he preferred the guillotine to hanging, adding that the French prisons were more comfortable than the English.

The French officials, while confident that he has seen the interior of an English gaol more than once .believe that he Is an American. How hC entered the flat is a mystery, as both front and back doors were securely locked, and there arc no traces of the premises having been broken into.

Poor Madame Kolb, whose married daughter from EnsJ.ind has been summoned to her side, lies In a critical condition with 40 gashes on her head, and if she does recover, which seems unlikely, she will always be fearfully disfigured.

On Madame Kolb's examination by the magistrate some further facts were elicited as to her llfe-and-death struggle. Her assailant In addition to his other weapons was provided with a silken lassoo with a funning noose, and this, after his sand-beg had burst, he endeavoured to slip over her head. But Madame Kolb wrested it from his grasp and also wrenched the indlarubber band and steel ball from his arm.

The prisoner is being defended by Maltre Allain, a barrlster.nsslgned him by the British Consulate, who speaks English fluently and has rather a specialty of English and American cades. The latest news from Paris states that the police have identified the prisoner as Henry Gilmour, who was born in Australia, and has spent several years in prison. . LONDON, April 2G. A man may be a burglar and a blackguard —he may in the pursuit of bis calling do his best to batter out a lady's brains with a steel ball, to strangle her with a silken cord, and cut her throat with a broken glass —and still possess a keen sense of sentimental chivalry. Henry Gilinour is showIng himself more careful of Madame Kolb's reputation than he was of her life. It has been suggested in Paris that Madame Kolb met Gilmour In a high-class bar in the Rue dv Helder, to which, according to her motor car driver, she used to resort. Gilmour scorns the insinuation, and declares it to be "lm-ulting alike to Madame Kolb and myself." Such an attitude will appeal to French sympathies as powerfully as the prisoner's plea of predestination to crime. A nameless, abandoned orphan-he had no other career open to him—such is his tale of woe. His mode of entrance to Madame Kolb's flat remains a mystery. The lady herself has expressed the opinion that he must have entered her apartment during.the day and concealed himself behind the window curtain of her drawing-room. Gilmour's "confession" is that one day when He was walking in London with v "gaol-bird," an old lover of Madame Kolb met them and proposed that Gilmour should commit the robbery, meet him the next morning at the Care dv Nord, return to London with him and divide the swag there, Accordingly, the gentlemanly stranger finding the capital for the enterprise, they left for Paris the next day. When Madame Kolb went out, the stranger opened the door of the flat wltli a key which he took from his pocket, let Gilmour in, and concealed him In the bath-room* There Gilmour waited all the erenlng until a male visitor left about ha.lt-

past 11. Madame Kolb went to bed. Three hours later, timed by his watch, he crept stealthily out to secure her valuables and jewellery, which he bad been told she kept in two cabinets in a petit salon opposite the bath-room. The keys of these cabinets were always placed by Madame Kolb on a table by her bedside. Creeping softly in shoes and stockings Into her room, he knocked up against the table on which.the keys lay. At the same moment the electric iight was turned on, and the desperate struggle related last week began. What is certain Is that Gllmour is an Australian and has been a criminal all his life. After 11 years in gaol at the Antipodes, he came to London, where he was before long sentenced to another seven years' "hard." Released about 12 months ago on a ticket-of-leave, he was lost sight of until he made such a sensational appearance in Paris the other day.