EXPERT TRAVELLING THIEF

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 290, 2 September 1933, Page 18

EXPERT TRAVELLING THIEF

Woman’s Criminal Career

Saved from a sentence of penal servitude by reason of the fact that she is suffering from wliat is regarded as a fatal disease, Nellie Ruth Munday, aged 51, an adventuress with an amazing past, was at Lincoln, England, recently sentenced by the Recorder, Mr. J. S. Pritchett, to 18 months’ imprisonment in the second division for pretences. A detective stated that Scotland Yard described Munday as an expert travelling thief." Between 1896 and 1932 she had been imprisoned' for 19 years in all. In committing her offences she used the names of titled ladies, such as “Lady Markham,” “Lady Dashwood," “Lady Ramsay,” “Lady Cynthia Sackville West,” “Lady Jackson,” and “the Hon. Cynthia, Colewith." She was liberated from prison on January 6. Born at Cullercoates, near Grimsby, Munday quite early in life showed wayward tendencies, and made her first appearance in -the police court at the age of ten. She had stolen half-a-crownfrom her grandmother, and her general character was such that the Alford justices sent her to a reformatory at Sunderland for three years. . Many years later Munday became an adventuress, and for false pretences, fraud and theft, in various parts of England/she served terms of imprisonment ranging from one day to 18 months. In 1910 she was sentenced at Maidstone to three year’s penal servitude for stealing jewellery. Securing a situation on her release, Munday Jed a blameless life for two years. Then she drifted back into dishonesty, and Victimised dressmakers and milliners in the West End by her plausible tongue. Next she went to Paris, and as “Lady Muir” she, in •the course of the journey, ingratiated herself with the titled wife of a wellknown colonial ‘official. Her masquerade was discovered, and she was bundled out of the country, Arriving in .England she recommitted herself, and a sentence of six months’ Imprisonment followed.

Practically penniless on her release, Munday, using the name of a titled

woman, swindled dozens of West End tradesmen and to evade arrest she, for a time, acted as a guide to Americans touring the Shakespeare Country. While at Stratford-on-Avon, she telephoned to the famous authoress, the late Miss Marie Corelli, pretending that she was “Lady Ramsay” and 'a cousin of Princess Patricia.

A day or two later they had tea together, and as they were about to part her “ladyship” suggested that she had lost her purse. Miss Corelli handed her £2. After this Munday went to Warwick Castle and borrowed money from the wealthy woman then living there. The latter soon discovered that she had been entertaining an adventuress, and she communicated with the police. When detectives turned up at the house of a titled lady where Munday then was, she kept up her' game of bluff as “Lady Ramsay." For a time she was successful, but the police later established her identity, and for a series of frauds she received 18 months’ Imprisonment.

Munday’s .next appearance in court was in 1921, when she went back to gaol for nine months for swindling shopkeepers hr London.' For five years following her release she kept fairly straight, but in the end her old hankering for defrauding people got the better of her. Consequently in October, 1928, at London Sessions, she was ordered 15 months’ imprisonment for fraud and theft.

Regaining her freedom in November, 1929, Munday assumed the names of pi eminent titled society women, stayed at good-class hotels, and induced shopkeepers to part with articles' with which she disappeared. This resulted in her being sent to gaol for ten months.

Again in February, 1931, Munday appeared in the. dock in London, and the Judge ordered her a year’s imprisonment with hard labour for receiving •. property stolen in a guesthouse. Now, as mentioned, she is once more behind gaol walls, and suffering from an incurable malady.