AUDACIOUS THIEVES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22030, 9 February 1935, Page 2 (Supplement)

AUDACIOUS THIEVES

MUCH LABOUR FOR LITTLE HOURS OPENING A SAFE HAUL OF FIFTEEN SHILLINGS Four robberies, remarkable for the extraordinary audacity faf the thieves concerned, took place at a week-end in England shortly before Christmas. At Folkestone, Kent, the raiders spent hours removing a scwt. safe from some offices. They took it through the streets on a truck, forced it open on the clilf top, and all the money they found inside was 15s. Jf they had only looked on the wail beside the safe in the office they would have found the keys there to open it! This robbery took place early in the morning at the offices of Messrs. Swoffer and Co., wholesale fruiterers. The thieves smashed a window to get into a room in which there were two safes, one, a large one, built into the wall. Although the beading of 'this was broken off, the door could not be forced.

The men then apparently went to an upper room to eat some dates before returning to attack the second safe. This they carried out through the front door of the offices and placed on a hand-truck which had been left directly under a large electric light standard.

Wheeling their load along to the East Cliff, more than a mile away, the

thieves then set to work with a 6ft.• iron bnr to force it open. They wrenched off the door, found 15s in cash and the books and papers of the firm inside, had a feed of walnuts taken from the offices, and then putting the safe back on to the tr'iick again, ran it to the cliff top and toppled both safe and truck over the edge. Boy Raises an Alarm

At East Grinstead burglars raided the home of Mr. Julian Berger in Malsford Park, adjoining the main London-Eastbourne Road, while the family was at dinner. The raiders used a ladder to*reach the bedroom window, and helped themselves to jewellery valued at more than £IOOO before escaping without being seen or heard. The police expressed confidence that the raid was the work of the notorious gang of " dinner-time burglars " who have made so many rich hauls recently. Within five days in November jewellery valued at more than £15,000 was stolen in various parts of the country by dinner-time burglars. Thieves at Aldershot, after spending many hours loading a largo motorlorry with 300,000 stolen cigarettes, were defeated by a youth. The raiders had entered a warehouse by climbing a loft, wall and breaking a window. They tore off the back of a safe and stole about £3O.

Then, choosing the largest motorlorry from the garage, they carried cases of cigarettes tip three flights of stairs, through a window, along a roof, and down to the lorry. Before they got away with the lorry, however, the youth, named Barnes, returned to the garage for his bicycle, raised the alarm, and the men escaped.

Four men with a motor-car were concerned in a raid at Balham. They removed a heavy iron safe from an office in Dinsmore Koad. The safe contained about £65 in notes and cash, and the front door of the shop was found to have been forced. Boring of Sixty Holes

Sixty holes were bored with a brace and bit through a wooden shutter guarding a ground floor window at the country mansion of Lord Waring, Foots Cray Place, Sidcup, Kent, early one morning by who stole valuables worth about £IOOO. A piece was cut out of the shutter sufficiently large for the intruders to crawl through. Mr. G. Sharpe, the caretaker, said: " The mansion has been empty for some time, and it was not until I went round the rooms at 8 o'clock this morning that 1 discovered anything was wrong. No clue has been found. There are no finger-prints and no muddy footprints, as one might expect." Mr. Sharpe said he believed that the robbery occurred at about 5 a.m. "It was at that time," he said, " that my dog began to bark furiously. .1 suspected nothing.'' The stolen articles include a number of Venetian teaspoons, a pair of ivory figures, a gilt trolley on a marble base, an inlaid mother-of-pearl miniature trunk, two photographs of Lady Waring in valuable frames, an ivory carving of Columbus, and one of a sportsman and a bronze figure of a soldier. The most extraordinary item of the thieves' haul is a jewel-mounted ostrich eggJudge's House Entered Thieves, who used a ladder taken from an adjoining house, broke into Lord Justice Maugham's residence in Cadogan Square, Chelsea, just before dusk one evening. While they were rifling the bedrooms of Sir Frederic Maugham and Lady Maugham, thieves were it is believed, disturbed by a servant who tried to enter the rooms, and raised the alarm when she found that the doors were locked on the inside. The intruders had time only to snatch up some articles of personal jewellery, including a diamond bracelet and a watch, from Lady Maugham's room before escaping. The thieves ran considerable risks in making their raid. They first broke into an untenanted house adjoining, in which the late Mr. Arnold, Bennett once lived, then reared a ladder, taken from the garden, against the bedroom windows, and forced an entrance. Lord Justice Maugham was .not at home at the time.