MASTER CRIMINAL

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 2313, 4 December 1925, Page 11

MASTER CRIMINAL

AUSTRALIAN RACING MAN. GAOLED IN LONDON. A sentence of three years’ penal servitude at the afro of 71 brought to a close, for the time being, the as- ; tonishing underworld career of James Duncan Roberts, who turned to crime in England after losing a fortune in Australia. This amounted to £15.000, and was left to him by his father, : who died in Victoria while he and his brother were at school in Eng- j land. Three of his accomplices, in- 1 eluding a young woman, were also sentenced. Other members of the gang are at large. According to the evidence given at the London Sessions, Roberts, a convict and forger, was the master mind of an organisation ct criminals. Ho directed th e plans of campaign whereby they made numerous hauls of jewellery from various London hotels. The young woman in the gang secured j situations in these hotels by means of j references forged by Roberts. When ! she had marked down wealthy guests, nnd learned where their jewels were kept, other members of the gan° would stay in the hotel as visitors ' decamping with the booty at the earliest opportunity. In possession of Roberts, whose conviction was for receiving stolen property, the police found all the stock-in-trade of a forger and confidence man. Roberts, it was stated, in Court, was the son of an Australian sheep-farmer who died worth £70,000, of which the son inherited £15,000. He went in for horse-racing, became a successful owner, won many races, and accumulated huge sums. But reckless gambling ruined him. He changed his name to Duncan Brown and left Australia for Scotland, where he studied crime in Glasgow under the tuition of a trainer of thieves who was far more up-to-date than Fagin. Afterwards he wont from crime to crime with varying success and more than one conviction. He is but one of the many who have secured for Australian con- j fldoncp men such a bad eminence in i tie annals of Scotland Yard.