LIFE OF CRIME.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 65, 17 March 1934, Page 4 (Supplement)

LIFE OF CRIME.

THE WORST WOMEN. " BAD BESSIE" LOOKS BACK. Bessie Barry, aged nearly 00, of Hoxlon, can realise the futility of it all now shelooks back on '20 years—a third of her life —spent in gaol. And she is intent only on one thing, to live down her nickname as "Bad Bessie." "Eddie Guerin once said 'you can't win' at crime," she recalled. "But only people like me know how true that is. What have 1 got out of it all—broken health, the prospect of aa old age spent in poverty." And how did it all start —this life of crime: Here's what Bessie said: — "1 'went down' for the first time as a girl of sixteen," she said. "For a trivial offence I got fourteen days' imprisonment. Her Tragic Start. "I was thrown into the company of some of the worst women criminals you could find in the whole of England—and 1 still maintain that those first contacts were the cause of my subsequent career of crime." _ . () During her prison life, "Bad Bessie met some of tile most notorious women convicts of the century, including Chicago May, the woman who figured in the "Devil's Jsland" case and who went to penal servitude for 15 years Iju her part in the attempt to murder Eihne Guerin. "1 was in the cell next to that ot Chicago May in Aylesbury Prison," Bessie said, "i was then doing a three years' sentence. Chicago May was one of the most striking women J have ever met — tall and dark —but she had a temper like that of a caged leopard. She was always very nice to me —but she used to smile when i told her 1 was 'in' for shoplifting. Chicago May's Advice. " 'Listen,' she said to me once. 'Take it from me—playing at being bad ain t no good. Taking things from shops is only a sneak's game. . . If you re going to "be bad, make up your mind to be very, very bad. Thieving will only get you chicken feed.' "Then she smiled, and showed her beautiful, white, regular teeth. They used to tell me that Chicago May was known as 'The Worst Woman in America'—but to me she was as kin<l as a mother. 1 went to her cell one day and found her, as usual, doing some little things to make herself pretty. " 'Sav, Bessie,' she said, 'I'm aching to K et out. . . It's tough enough being in gaol when you've no friends. But when you've got one friend who's dearer to you than the whole world —when you're in love. 1 mean —then gaol's hell!' "May was a very unruly prisoner. She seemed to lose her temper at the slightest thing. And she'd kick and scream and use terrible language. And the more they punished her, the worse she became. "The worst woman I ever met was a Miss Masset. who murdered her child at Dalston. She looked the personification of evil, and she once said that if she had the chance she'd kill all the children in the country. I think the poor thing must really have been a mental case. But the prisoner I remembered best was poor little Ethel Le Neve, with whom Dr. Crippen bolted after the murder of his wife. Belle Elmore. She told me several times that she had no idea, when she went aboard the Montrose with Crippen. dressed as a boy, that Crippen had murdered his wife."