ONCE KNOWN IN CHRISTCHURCH.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 11496, 31 January 1903, Page 7

ONCE KNOWN IN CHRISTCHURCH.

Scotland lias good cause to remember Mrs Gordon Baillie. For a number of •years (says the " Glasgow Weekly Mail") she plied a most successful calling as an impostor upon gentle and simple in her native country. Her first essay was under the- name by 'which she is still best known, but nlie passed from that to Lady Caur, to Lady Gladys Campbell, to Lady Stewart, 11 Lady Dundonald, and to other combinations of the same aristocratic sort. For a '" lady " she was rather a vulgar sort of a swindler, but she had style and manners and an unabashed countenance, and these carried her through a gTeat deal too far. Frequent and growing terms of imprisonment caused her to fly the native scene, and she crossed the border into England. There she found for a little wliile a fairly lucrative field for her peculiar energies, but in due time the inevitable imprisonment came on, and, vulgarly dubbed "Scotch Helen" by tlie Sassenach police, she had to go. Then Australia had a turn at her, and- the aristocratic-loving folks with money, but without compensating brains, fell eaey victims to her. Again the swindling had its due reward, and Mre Baillie fled. America ie the field for specialists of all sorts, and she ttirned up there. Now, for what are slumped aa " scores of offences," sbe is wintering in prison adjacent to New York, and it will be the month of March ere she emerge*.