FRIGHTENING BURGLARS

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 6, 8 January 1930, Page 3

FRIGHTENING BURGLARS

♦ ■ Most of us have our own ideas of the best method of frightening away; burglars. I came across a new one when I visited a large house yesterday (writes A.D.C.- in the London •'Daily Mail")- The owiier is against the use of bells or warning devices. "When they awaken you," he explained, "you are half-asleep, and the burglar alert, and you are at a disadvantage." His scheme lights the lower part of the house before the burglar can mount the stairs, and leaves the upper rooms, in which family and servants sleep, in darkness. As-a student of psychology, ,he believes that no burglar would go from lower lighted rooms to dark upper rooms after the shock of seeing the lights blaze up. I remember a burly friend of mine, an amateur boxer of repute, stating that if ho heard burglars downstairs he would throw something heavy throu §JX' the window, and help others to calch tho miscreant. I know a jeweller who, itt addition to' having a ringing burglar alarm, has fitted a death's head that lights half-way up the stairs to the dwelling part of tho house. All sof which recalls what I was once toldjby, a. detective. "If it is merely a question of frightening a burglar away," he said, "three pennies thrown down the stairs at intervals of half a minute would have the desired effect. • /The burglar would know there was waking life upstairs. There would be no voice to tell him the strength of tho opposition. Probably superstition would help to make Km .run." . . ■',