INCENDIARISM IN LONDON.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18518, 1 October 1923, Page 7

INCENDIARISM IN LONDON.

GIGANTTC ORGANISATION.

NEARLY 200 EAST END FIRES.

INSURANCES. TOTAL ; £250,000.

By Telegraph— Association— A. and N.Z. LONDON. Sept. 28.

A remarkable story of a gigantic incendiary organisation, described as the greatest ever known in Great Britain, lies behind tlio conviction at tho Old Bailey of three foreigners on charges of arson. One, Joseph Englestein, was sentenced to six years' imprisonment, Bernard Stole rraan to five years, and Julius Brust to four years. Tho convicted men are all Shoxeditch cabinetmakers.

Englestein, who is known to Scotland Yard as "London's Firo King," is believed to have been responsible, with the help of a syndicate which ho built around him, for nearly 200 East End fires.

Conviction was brought about as the result of an anonymous communication regarding an explosion in Stolerman's premises.

Englestein was boastful in the extreme. He was heard on a number of occasions to declare that he was unrivallod in cases of obtaining money from insuring firms, and had been setting fire to buildings for i.5 years. He said: "It was dead easy stuff. I was never traced." He levied a scale of charges for crimes of £100 for small business and £1000 for large.

Englestoin and his associates were tracked through tho . agency of two brothers, East End cabinetmakers, who suspected tho gang of being connected with suspicious outbreaks in furnituremaking establishments, and communicated their suspicions to the police, who discovered that Englestein wait not only the incendiary, but also the prime mover in a plan to defraud a commis:aon which is awarding compensation ' to East End people whose property had been destroyed by aerial bombing during the war, together with bogus robberies and other illegal methods of obtaining insurance. It is estimated that London insurance offices.were defrauded of £250.000 as the result of Englestein's plots srace 1920.