A STORY OF UNPARALLELED SENSATION.

Evening Star, Issue 10339, 12 June 1897, Page 1 (Supplement)

A STORY OF UNPARALLELED SENSATION.

At the Westminster Police Court on April 8, William Allen, a well-dressed man, described as a valet, arrested at Daventry, Northamptonshire, was charged with being concerned with two convicts in the robbery of a watch, diamond scarf pin, money, far overcoat, etc., from Mr Richard Dick, a gentleman residing in St. George's road, Pimlico. Mr George Wallia, solicitor, made a remarkable statement to the magistrate. He said that the Court was familiar with the story of the robbery from the prosecutor on the Embankment, but probably was unaware that other outrages of the sort remained unpunished through the disinclination of gentlemen to prosecute. The prieoner, when arrested, told Detective - inspector M'Carthy that he had been in straitened circumstances; but the fact was that he had lived in luxury, though for years he had never earned a sixpence honestly. He and other members of his gang had extorted large sums by blackmailing gentlemen of the highest social position, and the police were now in possession of information as >o the working of the gang, which, if publicly stated, would make a story of unparalleled sensation. They bad wt ought the most terrible havoc in the West End, and it was now believed that three of them had been in communication with a gentleman who cime by a violent death—ascribed at the time to an accident and that other misery bad attended their victims. Their modus operandi was to lure gentlemen into tbeir dens, and if these scoundrels found that their victims were married, or bad daughter, they were ever afterwards blackmailed and menaced. Detective - inspector M'Carthy said he knew the prisoner as a member of the blackmailing gang, and found on him the photograph of another prominent member named Bob Clibbnrn. This man Clibburn was present with about fourteen others in the billiard room of a public-house—the Devonshire Arms in Denman street, at the back of the Trocadero—when the witness arrested Sanders, one of the men now undergoing five years' imprisonment for this robbery. The prosecutor gave evidence of the fact that he got back the pawn tickets of his property for a consideration from the prisoner, and at the time he told that bim he was afraid he was compounding a felony. The prisoner said his friends thought they ought to have at least £2O. Mr Sheil committed the prisoner to the Old Bailey for conspiracy.