PRETTY BURGLAR

Evening Star, Issue 20255, 16 August 1929, Page 1

PRETTY BURGLAR

LONG LIST OF CRIMES Known to the police as “Goldenhaired Chvissic,” and by three or mu • other names, a, wmniajk with a long, eari- of “Raffles” fxploits. earned o.”- .vith the coolest dan i nas teen aoiit back to pr-on for a Imecn-momJis term. , , •■ -f-v It was at the London sorsi/ms— a familiar '.haunt to her, 1 am auaui—that this sentence was passed upon her after the brief details oi her recent exploits had been laid before the (oun, (writes an English crime reporter). It was related how she had luoken into a flat in .Baker street, getting away with over £IOO worth of property. and how she had then broken into the premises of a West End beauty specialist and stolen articles worth .(?gg ~ The pretty little woman in the dock, who stood with down-bent head and fingers which nervously clasped tno handkerchief with which she dabbed her eyes from time to time, pleaded guilty to both charges. , The story of Christine Lewis, or Chrissie Dearden, or Christina Reid, as she is variously known to, Scotland Yard, is that of a female Raffles. A pretty, auburn-haired woman, with largo, innocent-looking eyes, and always fashionably dressed, there is little in her appearance to suggest that sue is one of the most daring of housebreakers and has a long prison record behind her. She was only a child, comparatively speaking, when she became a crook, and ever since she has been in the hands of the police, and always on the same charges—housebreaking and burglary. Her methods are simple enough, but remarkably effective, and, although for the best part she usually works alone, there are occasions when she has had another woman to help her. She is a woman with a loyalty rare _ among thieves, for, when on a previous occasion she appeared at the London sessions, another woman was accused of having partnered her in her crimes, she resolutely refused to give her accomplice away, or even indicate who she was, preparing to suffer alone. It is her custom when setting out on a house or flat-breaking expedition to carry a small jemmy and an attache case. Always well dressed, she is not likely to arouse suspicions in the minds of any of the people who chance to see her entering a block of flats. Sometimes she has a look at the names in the entrance hall to the block, and then goes out to the nearest tube station and rings up the occupants. If there is no answer she knows that the place is empty, and hurries round. She forces the door with the jemmy, or removes one of the small leaded panes of glass from the panel of the door, and, inserting her hand, opens the door from the inside. At other tunes she adopts what is known in criminal slang as the “ pounding” method. That is, she pounds on the door of the selected flat, and if the door is opened she will represent that she is a wardrobe dealer’, and ask whether the occupant has any old clothes for sale. _ ■*. This pretty woman is now only thirtyone vears of age, and looks even less. It was hack in 1908, when she was but a little girl of ten, that she fell foul of the police in connection with the theft of some money. From Montrose Sheriff Court she was sent to an industrial school for three vears, and she has always declared that she learned more about crime during those three years than ever since.