GEM HAUL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 70, 23 March 1935, Page 8 (Supplement)

GEM HAUL.

ACROBAT BURGLARS. Burglars broke through three locked doors, sawed through iron bars and a fourlever lock, to get at £3000 worth of jewellery in Aldgate, East - London, recently. They escaped with the haul down a rope made of rolls of silk.

The raid was carried out with extraordinary daring at the premises of Russells, opposite the Aldgate Metropolitan station in High Street. The thieves gained an entrance to premises above the shop through a door leading from the street to a staircase 30 yards away from the jeweller's.

They smashed down three doors until they reached a gown manufacturer's workshop, immediately above Russells, and removed several floorboards, and tried in vain to smash through the ceiling of the shop.

Finding this useless, they climbed through a barred window on to a narrow ledge immediately above and at the back of the jeweller's. There is a 40-foot drop on to the Metropolitan Railway lines from the ledge.

One of the burglars is believed to have lain on his stomach while he cut with a hacksaw through two iron bars of a skylight and then through the heavy lock. The thieves dropped into a cubicle behind the shop, and went through to the window.

There they extracted rings from dozens of pads, and after clearing the window tackled the counter cases. They climbed back on to the ledge above the shop, and from the gown manufacturer's store took rolls of silken material. These they made into a rone. They lowered this to the railway lines below, tied one end to tha iron bars and then climbed down it.

Someone in a nearby building overlooking the back cf the jeweller's saw the hanging rope soon after dawn and told the police. The manager of the jeweller's shop told a reporter:—"When raj' assistant arrived shortly before 8 o'clock he found the front door locked and carried on as usual and three policemen looking at him from inside the shop.

"They had entered by the same route as the burglars. Their cleverness is astonishing, and they ran a great risk ot dropping on to the electrified lines eo close to Aldgate station. Luckily some of our most valuable jewellery was in the safe; they made no attempt to open it."

The burglars left jemmies and crowbars behind,