VETERAN BURGLAR

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22955, 5 February 1938, Page 2 (Supplement)

VETERAN BURGLAR

EXPERT WITH LOCKS "CLEVEREST IN LONDON" SONS CONVICTED THIEVES Known as "Benjy" to his underworld associates, London's champion lockpicker has just started on a term of penal servitude passed on him when h® appeared with two confederates iu the Old Bailey dock. Although ho is now 74 years of tho skill of Benjamin Gerlack is unsurpassed in his own special line. Gerlack pleaded guilty to warehouse breaking, and Detective-Sergeant Nicolscn threw light on the man's past. "He is the cleverest man iu London with the lock," the officer said, "and was looked up to with respect by other t'lieves. , "When he was called in on a job housed to dress up smartly, and the benevolent old gentleman wandering round a warehouse was spying out the ground and examining the locks. "Ho would take impressions and cut oht keys, which he would supply to the gang waiting to break in. He has t»0 sons who are convicted pickpockets. Both are about 40, and they were firrt convicted when they were t,,u ' ' ' "Gerlack came to England at t»® latter end of last century, and lus wife —who is in Antwerp—coinplauiea to the police that ho brought his sons to England to teach them to steal. Gerlack lived in South Hackney, nno with him in the dock were Abralintij Levison. aged 51, traveller, of no nx abode, and Lewis Lazarus, 37, (leal 'i i of Upper Clapton. They were coming from a Stepney warehouse « sacks full of furs valued at £44UAll three men, were sentenced t« tn years' penal servitude. 1 V I