LURED TO A PICNIC

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXII, Issue 193, 30 July 1932, Page 7 (Supplement)

LURED TO A PICNIC

TRICK ON THE POLICE STORY OF A COCKFIGHT. HOT CHASE AFTER DECOYS. Three mysterious-looking men, carry, ing small sacks, slipped out of the back door of a house in a small industrial town in Yorkshire, recently, and stepped into a waiting motor-car, which set off at top speed across the moors. Within a minute police car* darted away in hot pursuit. The long chase did not end until the Lancashire border was reached. There the three men of mystery got out of their car and produced from the sacks —sandwiches! They ate them with relish in front of the disappointed police. At that moment, miles away, one of the most important cock fighttug mains for many months was being held without police intrusion. It had been organised from the very town whose police sleuths had been decoyed away to a picnic party by the “sandwich men.”

The main had been arranged by lead, ing exponents of cock fighting in the north, and some of the most doughty birds had been matched, A site wa| selected on the bleak moors nearly on the Lancashire border, and, although only a few of the people who were present knew the exact time and place, the secret leaked out. The knowledge that the police were on the look-out came to the organisers’ ears Jess than two hours before the arranged time. It was too late to cancel the event, but not too late to alter the details. Telephone calls were put through, and visits were made to certain places. The result was that, at tho time originally fixed for the start of tho expedition, three men got into a motor-car a» described by a “Daily Express" coito. spondent. Plain-clothes policemen had bee* watching the house all day, and, as tho motor-car left—with, as it wa» thought, game-birds in the sacks—some officers went in police cars in pursuit, while others flashed a warning to other parts of the county along tho route the men with the sacks were expected to take. Every one interested in the cock fighting, apart from the three decoys, had meanwhile gone to an isolated spot arranged at the last minute. Nearly fifty men saw matches for wagcri varying from £5 to £lOO. Hundreds of pounds changed hands during the afternoon, and three valu. able cocks fought until they died. There was not even a hint of police interference.