BURGLAR AS MAYOR.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20252, 11 May 1929, Page 3 (Supplement)

BURGLAR AS MAYOR.

OHAIRMAN OF THE BENCH. •how wrongdoer "make good." An ex-police inspector, who writes in a London paper, tells the following stories of his experiences with criminals: — When I retired and went to live in a' small town a local minister called on me. Recognition was mutual. We had met three times before, and on the last occasion he had blacked both my eyes in his fight to resist arrest. I had interrupted him while he was busy burgling a house. He had served five sentences, and had just missed being charged with manslaughter. But after that he had slowly built up a character, and when ho had proved himself as a lay preather had been ordained. Good luck to him! He was doing fine work. But if the members of his congregation knew!

A few days later I went for a charabanc trip to a neighbouring town, and ran up against the superintendent. Ho had been a constable in my division years previously. " It's quite decent here," ho told inc. " We've a splendid mayor as chairman of the bench. 'lhe other 0110 was dreadful. . . Here ho is—l'll introduce 3'ou." No introduction was necessary, for the man had been through my hands half-a-dozen times for embezzlement, receiving stolen property, house-breaking and passing dud notes. But he had made good. Mayor and magistrate! And tho last time I had seen him was when he was resisting removal from the dock and was shouting to the bench that he'd like , to smash to pulp the face of every magistrate in the country. Although I'd have enjoyed pulling his leg about, that, he took the cue that I did not know him.

" I'm all right," said another reformed criminal I met casually in a train. " I've been seven years with Lord X., as footman first, and now butler." "Lord X?" I echoed. " Didn't you get 18 months for burgling his town house? ... I thought so! So you are with him 1 Does he know 1" " Oh, no," he replied, " but his -lordship often says 'he wishes he could lay his hands on—on —the scoundrel." So far I've only run up. against two women criminals who had reformed. One was managing a shop; the other I met in tho street. She stopped me—l don't think I should have known her—and after telling me she was going straight, she recalled the advice I had given her years before to give up the shoplifting game. She was then only 19, but had been in prison four times. "I'm married now," she added, and, remembering certain uncomplimentary remarks she had passed about the facial beauty of the constables who had brought her to the station the last time she had been given in charge, I ashed her chaffingly: "To a constable?" " Oh, no," she replied; " my husband's a sergea'nt!"