STEALING NEWS SHEETS.

Bruce Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 2178, 27 June 1890, Page 5

STEALING NEWS SHEETS.

Soma years agi I managed a great London morning newspapar. One evening I was sitting in my room whe^ I received a very dirty card from the doorkeeper, wVi said that a man who had brought it wanted to see him very badly. As a rule I did not see promiscuous callers ; bub I thought I would let this one come in, and I said so. There entered a shuffling, nervous-looking man of about fifty, w\o had fche mingled air of a mechanic and a thief.

" Well, what do you want ? " I asked

" I've come on a secret matter," said he, " and Til only tell you what it is— it's very important — if you'll promise thafc, if you don't like my proposition, you'll let me go away as I came." I thought, as such a man could hardly be about to suggest any crime to me, I might give him this promise. I ssid — " All right ; I'll agree to that j but be

quick." ''"Well," he remarked,, looking furtively round the room as though he expected to see a policeman behind a chair, " I work in the printing office of Messrs , and I've got a rough proof of the Government report on— — which is to be out in three days' time. And I'm willing to sell it. I want a hundred i pounds for it." . r , I " You stole it, I suppose 1" said I.

" No, no," he hurriedly replied, " I didn't steal it. I can't say how I came by it ; but I didn't steal it," " But we shall have the reputation of having stolen ifc," I remarked, "if we print it. Oh the whole, I clo not think I will take it ; you can go."

He went. Next day the report appeared in another morning paper, and the Parliamentary Committee appointed to inquire into how it did so appear failed to trace the author of the theft. I remember a similar transaction when at Berlin in 1878 during the sitting of

the Congress there. A man stole the rough draft of the first set of articles; to the treaty, and offered them to me for £1,000. I looked them over and. saw that they were incomplete and incorrect, and refused them. A day or, two afterwards a leading journal in London published them — and was very sorry fbr it afterwards. Stolen news finds a great market amongst London correspondents for provincial papers. I recollect once, when I was still acting as newspaper manager, I had reason to suspect that news was being conveyed out of our printing office by one or other of the compositors, and that it was appearing in a slightly

altered form in a certain large provincial journal. So I laid a little trap. I wrote a short telegram, purporting to date from Chislehurst, as follows— " The Empress Eugenic was attacked and badly wounded to-night by an assassin, who entered her roorri by a window. Her Majesty lies ih a precarious state. The would-be murderer is in custody, ahd is believed to be a prominent Communist."

About 2.0 a.m. I gave that "copy "

to the head printer, with instructions to have it set by the "staff" compositors, of whom there were only sir, and at 2.30, just before going to press, and just after the staff compositors had gone home, I had the bogus news withdrawn. That day I had the satisfaction of seeing the extraordinary "intelligence" from Chislehurst appear in the country paper I- had suspected ; was enabled to detect the compositor, and so punish the thief and the receiver at one and the same time.