"ANZAC POKER"

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 4, 5 January 1924, Page 9

"ANZAC POKER"

CARDS FOR HIGH STAKES

"PEG TOP SMITH"

(PBOSJ OUR OWN CORKBSPOSDENI.I LONDON, 24th November. In January, 1921, an Army pensioner named Matthew Biggar, no fixed abode, was charged with conspiring with two others to obtain by false pretences, with intent to defraud, two sums of £5 from Major W. \V. Roche,'of the Connaught Rangers. Two of the conspirators (Ford and Macdonald) were fentenced to two years' hard labour each, at the Old Bailey, but Biggar, who was allowed out on bail, absconded to Paris On a false passport. . This week Biggar was cleverly arrested in the Great WesternHotel, and he was yesterday sentenced to ten months' imprisonment on the two years' old charge. ■ ■ " Peg Top Smith " wa? one" of, the many names used by Biggar, a onelegged man with a good war record,, who was known to his associates as "the captain." Like the other leaders of the confidence trickster gang, he was a widely travelled man, and always well dressed. , Mr. Herbert' Muskett prosecuted for I the Commissioner of' Police, and Mr. j. ! A. C. Keeves defended. . ! Prisoner pleaded guilty. [ Mr.'Muskett said after his '■ disappear-! i ance Biggar evaded arrest, till 3rd No-j . ve'mber, when he was arrested in the 1 hotel lounge. He left the country with a passport he attained by improper means. His record was an extraordinary-i one. He was born in Victoria in 1881, and had had numerous aliases. He was 1 first arrested in 1905 at Queensland for j ' attempting to steal from the person. In 1909 he was sentenced to nine months at Christchurcb, New Zealand/ and in j ' 1910 to two years in . Queensland for i larceny. In 1911 he was charged in I |. London with loitering in reference to a confidence trick, and discharged on condition that he left the country, which he did, going again overseas, but Biggar was back in this country by the ; end of 1914. In 1915 the police.had a complaint of a confidence trick in the | Great Central Hotel, but complainant, a foreigner, left the country, and the war- ' rant was withdrawn. From 1920 onwards there was a long record of cases against him, which had come to the notice of the police. All were of a similar character—namely, inducing people to play cards for large sums of money. At various times Biggar .had obtained enormous sums. Detective-Inspector Leach, of New j ' Scotland Yard, said ; one of the cases in- ! volved £1000. Tho police officer produced a photo and record of the accused. On this being shown to the prisoner, he strenuously denied that it was a phots'l of himself. Mr. Ernest Cyril Smith, a general seceretary, related how he met accused three years ago, apd as a result of a, horse-racing scheme which prisoner induced him'to enter he lpsfc £1006. Mr. Keeves said accused entirely/denied the convictions in Australia, and his subsequent troubles were due to his getting into undesirable company. ' He was married, and his real name was Biggar. ■ ■ ■■• V Mr. Mead, sentenced accused to ten months' imprisonment, mitigated punishment in view of his injury. . Biggar asked that he might see his wife, and his request was granted. ' : working '. of the confidence :[ trick. : Daniel Delaney, who was sentenced to three -years'. penal servitude for a confidence trick at the Old Bailey yesterday, and Matthew Biggar, are stated to have been associated with a gang of tricksters under " Bill " Warren, now undergoing a sentence in a Paris prison. They lived on the credulity of men and women, and have spent thonsands of pounds on gambling.Biggar was the educated and cultured man of the pair, whilst Delaney was the i rough-and-ready spotter, who in his years, which number 52, had gathered a veneer and a knowledge of languages which served him well. Criminal records show that Delaney is an Irishman ■who went to Australia when he was a youngster, and learnt his early vice on the racecourses and the saloons of Melbourne and Sydney. The 'first time the police fell foul of him was in South Africa in 1904, when he was sentenced to.two years for theft. Then he came tp England and met Warren and the snper-crooks. In January, 1907, he was sentenced to three months for assault at Marlborough' street, a month later three months for assaulting the police, several convictions for loitering, more for dunkenness; and, finally,-a, three years' sentence of penal servitude at the West Riding Assizes for simple larceny; then nine months in January, 1920, as an incorrigible rogue, another six months for theft in the next year, and again a sentence of six months for obtaining £400 by a confidence trick. In between-his English sentences he would be seen ou the Continent. One afternoon, in a fashionable hotel at Nice, the French police seized'him-and expelled him from the country,, and ho'was also given a sentence, in absentia, at Brussels, of five years. Free from prison, Delaney actually went to Brussels and contested his.sentence. He persuaded the Magistrates t;i waive the sentence, and it was done on condition he left Brussels in twenty-four hours. "Nobody" left that afternoon. But a Philippine doctor, Florentine Olv ioco, whom he robbed of £400 in the city, was his undoing.. CARDS AT FLAT. Biggar is a really remarkable and debonair crook. When Warren had the' luxurious flat out in Oakwood Court, Kensington, Biggar is stated to have •frequented it. His own little flat was in the shortest' street in London—Hay Hill, off Berkeley square., '■ By means of fake cards he would make hundreds of pounds after having become firm friends with his victim, who would never dream of believing he was a cheat. ' When the leader, " Bludger Bill," was arrested in April of this year, Biggar managed to escape to Brussels, and later came back to London. Inspector Leach and Detective-Sergeant Smith were ""watching, and in th& Great Wes 7 \tern Hotel one afternoon Biggar and Delaney were arrested.