CAPTURE OF A NOTORIOUS BURGLAR.

Evening Post, Volume XVII, Issue 548, 28 June 1879, Page 2

CAPTURE OF A NOTORIOUS BURGLAR.

I One of the most expert criminals in the colony was brought before the Police Court yesterday, and committed for trial on two charges of house-breaking. The man, who has recently adopted the name of William Lonpr, is better known as Augustus Schmidt, a notorious burglar and forget, and the two cases investigated yesterday are striking; examples of the man's audacity and tact. Jn one instance be quietly entered a houta in Lon«ddeStreet, in the do&d <f tho night, by means of a latch-key, and then systematically overhauled tbe house from top to bottom. He entered rooms in which tha inmates were sleeping, and removed their watches and other jewellery, white he coolly unpacked a portmanteau in one room, and took the contents into another apartment, where he put taem into another portmanteau. Ue then left as quietly as ne came, and no one was aware of what had taken place until the ntxt morning, when the property was missed. In the seond case he climbed up a verandah post, and got into a first-floor window, and after stealing all he could las his bands Upon, he successfully mads bis exit. After effecting these and other robberies, he, in company with another man, perpetrated another felooy, and with the pr«ceeds he decamped to tiydaev. His prore±dings wera, however, suspected by Detective Considine, and as soon as the evidence was complete, informatton «ai sent to the police authorities in New South Wales, by whom he was ultimately arrested. Schmidt's career has been a somewhat extraordinay one. In 1851 he was sent ont under a sentence of seven years' penal servitude, and in 1863 he obtained his release oa a ticket-of-ieave. In 1369 he received nine years for f jrgery and uttering, and in 1865 he was sentenced to four years for the same offance in 1872 and 1874 he underwent three month-*' imprisonment for larceny, while on tbe Ist October of the latt>r year be received a cumulative sentence of five years for forgery and larceny. From this sentence he only recently gained his discharge, and then

appears to havo at once eommenoed » nr« Smatie aeries of daring ?**&*%JZ^? carried out with surprising success-Mel-bourne Argus, June 14.

Wawaxa Hawba