20.000 TOWELS LOST.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LX, Issue LX, 17 October 1910, Page 2

20.000 TOWELS LOST.

RAILWAY THIEVES' HAUL IN

TWELVE MONTHS.

Officials of the London and NorthWestern Railway Company stated during the prosecution of a man named Albert Ankers at Crewe recently that during the year no fewer than 20,000 towels had been stolen on the railway.

Ankers was sent to prison for two months for stealing four towels from a carriage of a Liverpool express, and for the theft of a bicycle.

A railway official stated in an interview that towels are not the only things that attract thS train thief. "Drinking glasses l>y the hundred disappear every year," he said, "while it is most unusual to find at the end of the journey the piece of soap furnished at the beginning to each toilet compartment.

"Water-bottles, too, , disappear in large numbers, and they are a much more costly item than the towels. , "Among other things which cannot be kept are window straps, ash trays fixed into the window ledges, paintings' and photographs of resorts, while, incredible though it may appear, cases have occurred more than once where seat cushions have been stolen.

"Window straps are now less popular with the thieves, for care is taken to make them as little like razor-strops as possible."