THE QUEEN OF CRIMINALS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 9775, 23 March 1895, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE QUEEN OF CRIMINALS.

AN ASTOUNDING ADVENTURESS. Sophie Lyons, the " Queen of Criminals," was arrested a few weeks ago in the States, where she was stopping at a fashionable

hotel, bub by a game that was at once bold

' and adroit »he escaped punishment, and has disappeared again. This Very extraordinary criminal has operated in nearly every park of the civilised world, and she has been at one time or another in every big prison of Europe and America. "The Queen". is known to the police in every capital of Europe, and the fact that she is at large is a source of constant disturbance to the criminal officials of this country. Sophie Lyons is a criminal by heredity. Tracing • her ancestry back for two or more generations, she finds leading thieves and criminals on both sides. Her grandfather, in London, I was "a cracksman to whom Scotland Yard I took off its cap." For years she gloried in } the audacious robberies of her husband, I Ned Lyons, Mho stole hundreds of thousands from the bank vaults of the States, i and furnished her with wealth to supply the requirements of a taste that was at once cultivated and extravagant. But when gunshot wounds and sickness impaired his usefulness in robbery she left him for a burglar who gave promise of even more brilliant achievements. It is one of the regrets of Sophie Lyon's life that death cut short her son, George Lyons. He died in prison, and his mother speaks of him as having been " cut off in his promise." AN EDUCATED WOMAN. When Sophie Lyons was arrested the police found her richly attired and surrounded by many evidences of luxury. She is conversant with the classics of English literature, and the masterpieces of French fiction are to her familiar. She speaks four languages fluently. She talked easily of Homer and Dante, and related incidents of acquaintance she claimed with Victor Hugo, Georges Saud, and Guy de Maupassant. She spoke of the new things in art and music, and was frank in discussing some of the phases in her criminal career. " Thev sav I worked the nobility of Paris for £40.000, but what does that amount to, pray? Tho expensive family I've gob and my own expenses wottld eat that up rapidly. They sav I'm immensely wealthy now, but I'm not. Probably I'm independent—in fact, I know I am." There is every reason why Sophie should be independent. She has possessed the finest jewels in an abundance that could only be explained by the fact that she could nob risk the temptation of stealing them. She was arrested upon the charge of having stolen diamonds worth £140 on Christmas Eve. It was a similar extraordinary manifestation of this woman's nature that caused the first disturbance in her marital relations with Ned Lyons. He was at that time THE KING OF CRACKSMEN, with enormous wealth as the result of his robberies. Believing that his brilliant attainments would suffice to maintain his family in comfort for the rest of their lives, be desired that his wife should devote herself to the care and education of their children. But either his great fame in criminal life fxciled her jealousy or her hereditary nstincts were too strong to be resisted, for ihe began a course of diamond stealing and shoplifting that caused her husband many anxieties. Well-dressed, handsome, and with the lithe quickness of a snake, Sophie Lyons would mingle with the crowds in the fashionable shops, and upon her return home would unload before the astonished gaze of her husband an endless variety of scarf-pins, jewelled brooches, watches, rings, and pocket-books. Sophie Lyons is now about 48 years of age, but she looks much younger. She has two daughters, whom she sent to a convent near Toronto when they were little girls. Her last public appearance, so far as the police archived record, was at Mount Stirling, Ky., in 1891, where she Was implicated with Jem Brady, said to be the handsomest thief alive, in a daring attempt to steal £9000 from a bank in broad daylight. He was sent to the Kentucky penitentiary. She escaped justice by the liberal use of money. Ned Lyons was born in Manchester, England, in 1839. His father was an honest weaver. The boy's mother died when be was a child. In 1850 father and son came to America, settling first in Lowell, Mass., and then removing to New York city. Here the boy fell into evil ways and passed beyond the control of his broken-hearted father, who died years before his son achieved his eminence in the criminal world. THE MARRIAGE. t Lyons soon wearied of the risks and small returns of robbing drunken soldiers, and joined a famous gang of bounty jumpers. That was a criminal pursuit that required coolness and daring. Lyons has made his boast that he enlisted IS times in one month. When New York became too hob he joined an organised gang and went West, succeeding in defrauding States, Counties, and cities at every recruiting post this side of the Mississippi Capture meant death. He returned to New York in 1866 well supplied with money. .• It was while he was cutting a wide swath that Sophie Levy came into his life. She was a slender, bright-eyed slip of a girl chaperoned in the circles in which she moved by the notorious Mme. Mandelbaum, the very queen of "fences." Her mother, Ann Levy, was at that time serving a four years' service in Sing Sing (the last of several) for shoplifting. All of her associates recalled with admiration the expertness as a housebreaker of her father, Sam Levy. Ned Lyons had but to meek this proud patrician to fall a victim to her charms and they were married. Lyons planned the robbery of the Ocean Bank, from which he took £200,000. Lyons retired to his Long Island home, and was living quietly yet luxuriously upon his share of the robbery. The boy George was born at this time. Mrs. Lyons seemed to fret under the success of her husband. Her professional pride was aroused, and she continued her depredations with ever-in-creasing boldness. The outcome was inevitable. When her baby was six months old she was caught red-handed. By the lavish use of money Lyons kept his wife out of prison. Soon after Sophie was caught with £200 worth of plunder on her person in A. T. Stewart's store, convicted, and sentenced to five years in Sing Sing. Ned Lyons' friends were at work in the moanwhile. On December 4, 1872, dressed in a suib of citizen's clothes that had been smuggled through the gate by a suborned guard, he bid in the bottom of a waggon and rode out to liberty. AN ESCAPE FROM PRISON. Once more a free man, Lyons set to work to secure the liberty of his wife. There was collusion, no doubt, in the matter of her escape. On the night of December 19,1872, Lyons and a male companion drove up in a sleigh, in the midst of a driving snowstorm, to the main entranco to the female prison, it that time located on the hill. The companion rang the bell and announced that he ad a basket of fruib for a sick prisoner. The door was flung open, and at that instant Sophie Lyons sprang past the guard, followed by the man with the fruit, jumped Into the sleigh, and sped away in safety. Together they reached Canada, and remained quiet for a while robbing a pawnbroker oi £9000, and with this booty they returned to New York. In September, 1874, the bank at Wellsboro', Pa., was robbed of money and bonds worth £30,000. Lyons was known to have been in the job. * Lyons and his wife next visited the Suffolk County Fair, near Kiverhead. Sophie was noon in the middle of the surging crowd picking pockets right and left with an almost childish enthusiasm. She was detected and arrested, but nothing was found upon her. Her husband called at tho gaol to see her, %nd was recognised as an escaped convict. When arrested £1000 in money and negotiable railroad bonds to the value of £2600 were found on his person. He was sent back to Sing Sing to serve out the balance of his term, amounting to 3 years and 7 months. Sophie was acquitted of the charge of picking pockets, bub was rearrested and sent back to Sing , Sing. She was released before her husband, and formed a liaison with a man known familiarly as " Ham brock." When Lyons wan discharged from prison on October 24, 1880, he secured a gun, and, filled with jealous rage, started oab to hunt " Hambrock." The latter saw him firs#, before Lyons could draw his . weapon he fell with a shattered jaw and a bullet in the body. Lyons' recovery was a miracle. From the day that Sophie Lyons deserted her imprisoned husband for " flambrock" their paths diverged. America was nob large enough for her, and in 1888, well equipped as to wardrobe, jewels, and ready money, Mme. De Varney, a wealthy American widow, on sight-seeing and pleasure bent, arrived at Mm French capital. There

she Was taken for picking pockets. She roundly denounced the outrage of her arrest. Emotional members of the American colony interested themselves in the cause of this cruelly wronged Southern lady. The Paris edition of a New York paper wrote columns denunciatory of the stupidity of the police. United States Minister M'Lean was induced to interfere in behalf of the fair American, and sha was discharged, triumphant 1