LOOTING CARGO.

Northern Advocate, 19 June 1920, Page 4

LOOTING CARGO.

ENORMOUS ANNUAL LOSSES,

The statement was made by a. Sydney police officer apropos of stealing on the wharves that hardly a ship that arrived at Sydney escaped tho thief immediately prior to, during; or soon after the end of the voyage.

The public, he said, did not realise how extensive the operations of the thieves were. The value ot goods stolen from the ships coming to Australia, 01 trading round tho coast, aggregated roughly a million pounds., and it had been going on for years.

The thieves work with extraordinary cleverness, and, though they do not operate under the cover of darkness, they managed to sorr, out the valuables from securely-nailed cases, closing them up again so neatly that no one would believe they had been tampered with.

' ' The story of the piano and the bricks," he said, "best illustrates the exportness of the class of thief. A Sydney firm ordered a piano from New York, and it was packed and dispatched upon its journey across the United States railways. The case arrived in Sydney in due course, but when it was opened there was no piano in it. Instead it contained hundreds of bricks — enough to weigh about the same as the piano. The bricks bore the-brand of a Chicago maker on them, .and when imvestigations were commenced it was naturally thought the exchange had been made in the great m< at-killing centre. But this was found sot to be the case. Millions of bricks had been sent from Chicago to San Francisco for shipment, and the piano had be _n removed in the Pacific Coast city. There are some of these bricks about now. I saw one of them tho other day.

"One well-known firm which ordered a large consignment of hats from an_ English company found, when the cases were opened, not hats, but thousands of copies of London papers. The lads on the wharves were reading tho papers for months afterwards. Another case from America, supposed to contain blouses, arrived at the Sydney house full of bits of light wood, seaweed, and a Christmas card."