SLY WOMEN

Feilding Star, Volume 7, Issue 2304, 5 September 1929, Page 3

SLY WOMEN

“CROOKS OF SYDNEY’ ’ While Sydney’s underworld is showing signs of emulating U ie racketeers, of Chicago by .adopting hold-up tactics and other more or less picturesque practices, it has: not yefc produced a woman crook of the bra-zen type of the Chicago lady who the other day calmly sat at the wheel of ia motor car -while bullets whizzed all round her. Nevertheless, Sydney lias its women criminals aplenty. The Sydney woman crook ia a subtle, sly and sinister person, who generally keeps well out of the limelight. She is often the engineer of coups for which later some man op men suffer when they are caught by the police. When she does take an active part in a crime, it is done as a rule so cunningly that fow excepting her victims are aware of what has happened. One notorious woman crook runs a KtU© shop, wbiich is really a. dope joint'. She is believed to be at the back of many robberies' by armed men. Another type of woman crook is the pickpocket—and many ol these are very clever at their game. One of the most notorious in Sydney was known as Timber May, and she died worth thousands of pound.-,'. There are, the . police say, few women burglars. When women figure in burglaries they are usa-lly used as decoys. ‘ * Since the campaign started a. few years ago to clear the crooks out of the city, many women criminals and their men associates have left the infamous Darlinghurst, area to live in tie outer suburbs. The resumptions of city slums has also driven many nests of crooks from their lair. However, if is doughtful if this breaking up of the old established rendevous has 'ladi any effect in (•Locking crime. j Things: today are so much easier for the crooks than they were some years ago. The motor has revolutionised the methods of the criminals. A burglar living in- one of the distant suburbs can operate m flic city area and then make a rapid escape.

,Certainly* there has been no falling off in crime in Sydney, and there has been an increase if anything in crimes of violence