REIGN ENDED.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17882, 1 October 1923, Page 14

REIGN ENDED.

' LONDON'S "FIRE KING"

- ORGANISED INCENDIARISM. sr ..•■•■

(By Cpble—Press (Australian and NZ. C.iblc Association.) LONDON, September 30. -A remarkable story of a gigantic incendiary organisation, described as the greatest ever known m Groat Britain, > lies behind the conviction at the Old Bailey on charges of arson of three foreigners—Joseph Englestein, Bernard Stolerman and Julius Brust, who Wore sentenced to sis, fire and four /years' imprisonment respectively. The i convicted-men are all Shoreditcbcabi-net-makers. , Englestein, who is known to Scotland Yard as "London's Fire King," is believed to be responsible, with the help pf a syndicate he built around him, for nsarly two hundred East End fires. His conviction was brought about as a result of an anonymous communication regarding an explosion on Stolerman's premises. Englestein was boastful in the extreme. He was heard on a number of occasions to declare that he was ■unrivalled in cases of obtaining money from insuring firms. "L have been

Betting fire to buildings for fifteen years," he said. "It is dead easy. The I staff. I use is never' traced." He levied a scale of charges for his crimes—£loo for a small /business and £IOOO for large. Englestein and his associates woro tracked through the agency of two .brothers, who are East End cabinetmakers', who suspected the gang and 'connected them with suspicious outbreaks in furniture-making establish'inents. They communicated their susof the police, • who discovered was not only an incendiary, ' but also the prime mover in a' plan to defraud' the ' commission which was .compensation to East End ''people' whose property was destroyed bombing during the war. Towith bdgus robberies and other 'iUrigaf methods of obtaining insurance, 'oli^ia.'estimated that London insurance "'dfficeS taive'heen defrauded of £230,000 sjsf» >; Wsult °* Englestein's plots, since ' ,—i— r— ———