CAREER OF FRAUD

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22202, 31 August 1935, Page 2 (Supplement)

CAREER OF FRAUD

WOMAN'S DOUBLE LIFE i i "SUCH CHARMING MANNERS" HUNTED BY POLICE FOR YEARS Many people in Holloway and Finsbury Park, London, wondered for some timo what happened to Mrs. Evelyn Hall. The neighbourhood knew her well —and liked her. She had such charming manners and was so generous. She went to church regularly every Sunday and hardly ever missed the morning service on the wireless.

She lived in a flat in Islington Road, Finsbury Park, for over twelve months, and had lived at other fiats in the district for some years. Shopkeepers in the whole neighbourhood remarked occasionally that they wished everybody was like Mrs. Hall, for she paid her accounts promptly and was never " fussy." Mrs. Hall is now in Holloway Prison, where she was sent for a term of three years' penal servitude and five years' preventive detention from the Old Bailey. She was sentenced in the name of Florence Page. She had been hunted by the police of the entire country for more than four years. Nearly Three Hundred Charges Her photograph had appeared regularly in the Police Gazette accompanied by a steadily growing list of the frauds she had committed on unsuspecting shopkeepers. When she was finally tracked down in May there were 297 charges against her. Mrs. Hall, whom Park respected so much, used to take almost daily trips to other towns. There she would walk into a shop, explain that her convalescent daughter was in need of new clothes, give a perfectly genuine name (presumably picked from the street directory), and leave with the goods on approval. She never visited the same town twice. During the week she was arrested she had made her calls in Oxford, Slough, Gravesend and Tottenham, and her haul included coats, dresses and jewellery.

So Open-handed "She would come home most evenings with her arms full of parcels," her landlord said. " Many a time she would give away to callers and friends gifts of all descriptions —from handbags and purses, to cameras and door-knockers. We occasionally saw her leaving in the mornings with a suitcase or handbag. " Mrs. Hall was never short of ready cash. She had explained to me a long time ago that she was a widow with independent means. She had sold up a business in Liverpool, she said, and was able to live on the interest from the money she had in the bank. She was liberal with her presents—she forgot none of her friends at Christmas or on a birthday—and her rent was always paid in advance. " No letters ever came for her, for she told us her correspondence went to an office in the city. She was connected with several charitable organisations." The Girl in the Tram-car It is known that she had carried out frauds on shopkeepers in Guildford, Rochester, St. Albans, Egham, Staines, Woking and Windsor. Once she went on a holiday to the seaside. Her holiday left behind a trail of fraudently obtained goods from shopkeepers in Brighton, Southend, Ramsgate. Margate, Southport, Blackpool, Liverpool and other places. Distance was no object to Mrs. Evelyn Hall. She might still have been preying on society had it not been for one of those chances that not even the smartest crook can contend with. Her last "job" was to obtain two coats from a Tottenham shop. A few weeks later, in Finsbury Park, she got on a tram-car and sat opposite the very girl who had served her with the coats on approval. The police even now do not know her reai name. They believe (but even this is not certain) that she was born in Tonbridge, Kent, though she herself often said she was the daughter of a stationmaster in the north of England.

Once a Servant Girl This much is know of her career: She went to London as a simple young girl, worked as a domestic servant, and in 1907 was first caught embarking on the career which is now interrupted at Holloway. On August 10 of that year she was bound over for stealing two skirts—her "sister" had been ill. She was then 24 years of age. Since 1930 the police hare been looking for her. But the manner of her operations—first one town, then another 50 miles away—made her a most elusive "customer." When she was arrested in May of this year her friends wanted to bail her out, for nobody could believe that Mrs. Hall could possibly be the woman the police wanted. Her friends were satisfied, however, when a large quantity of goods—shoes, hats, skirts, cameras, and so forth — were found in her room. She had no definite "receiver" for the goods. Most of them were pawned, and a small proportion have been recovered from pawnbrokers. What happened to f he rest of her "loot" will probably remain a mystery always.