PLOT TO ROB BANK

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVII, Issue 4458, 17 October 1933, Page 3

PLOT TO ROB BANK

SMART POLICE WORK. A plot to rob a bank, which was frustrated by police who posed as bank clerks, was described at the Old Bailey lately, when sentences were passed on three men. Sidney Perdue, aged 30, a stoker, George Thomas Jeffreys, aged 43, a bricklayer, and Leslie McCall, aged 20, a motor driver, pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring to break and enter Barclay's Bank at Woodford. It was stated that the men planned to break into the bank, tie up the manager, and steal a considerable amount of money. Perdue had been courting a maid at the bank before the robbery was planned. The men drove a car to the bank, and Perdue knocked on the door. Police, who had heard of the intention to raid the bank, were inside posing as bank clerks, and apparently the men abandoned the idea

of committing the robbery. Warrants, however, were issued for their arrest the next day, and the three men were arrested. It was originally decided that Perdue and the maid should be tied up in the house, but Perdue objected to that, and it was decided to overcome the bank manager. The police described Perdue as the ringleader of the gang. The Recorder, in passing sentence, said that the men had pleaded guilty to a wicked crime, and there was a great deal too much of that sort of thing going on. Perdue would go to prison for two years, Jeffreys for 18 months, and McCall for nine months.