FIFTY UMBRELLAS FROM BERLIN SHOP

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6811, 15 January 1929, Page 3

FIFTY UMBRELLAS FROM BERLIN SHOP

“ Queen of Shoplifters” Not many of the honorary titles borne by criminals have better justification than that of “Queen of Shoplifters,” now conferred by the German public on Dora Kocbcr. The last time this dexterous woman was before the Bei-lin courts her long list of exploits included the theft of an entire dinner service of 120 pieces, which she and a family gang, organised, trained, and directed by her, managed to secrete and carry out of some big stores under the very noses of attendants. At that time she lived in great style in a luxurious flat in the fashionable Kurfuerstendamm, and almost every day carried out raids on the West. Eud shops with the assistance of her sisters, daughters, and daughters-in-law. Brought up at the Dutch Court, where her father had a high official post, she had no difficulty iu assuming tho grand manner which at onco disarmed the suspicious and inexperienced shopgirls, and her sentence of five .years’ imprisonment on the former occasion was the expiation of plunder of various kiuds which would almost furnish a palace. Tho specific offence laid to her charge on the last occasion is almost as incredible as the dinner service. It is the “lifting” of no fewer than 50 umbrellas from a single shop. During the spring she and her accomplices paid frequent visits to this establishment, pnd inspected large quantities of wares Without, however, making any purchases. Only -when they had ceased to como did the owner of the shop notice a mysterious diminution of her 'stock, and on inaking up her books she found that 50 umbrellas could not be accounted for.

This staggering discovery seems to have sharpened her power of observation, for one day she identified with S'jch positiveness one of the missing a tides in the hand of a passer-by that sl'io did not hesitate to call in the p-jlicc. The bearer of the lost umbrella took a very high tone, but as she was identified with both Dora Eoeber and the unprofitable shopper of the spring, her indignant protests availer her nothing. The court softened its sentence of a year’s hard labour with the compliment that if she would employ her gifts of sleight of hand in taking live rabbits from other people’s clothing instead of secreting umbrellas in her own, she would probably find it a much more profitable as well as a safer, occupation.

On hearing tho judgment, however, she exploded in an outburst of apparently uncontrollable fury, flung to the floor a glass of water, the only movable object within her reach, poured out from foaming lips a flood of incoherent vituperation, and finally collapsed in violent convulsions. Only with the utmost difficulty did three stalwart warders succeed in bringing to rest her agitated limbs and strapping her to a stretcher, on which she was carried out of court.

This demonstration, however, did not seriously impress the onlookers, for her police record notes that while serving her last sentence she “took lessons” iu stimulation of various kinds of morbid seizures from fellow prisoners skilled in this art.