BURGLARY IN HARRIS STREET

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 4318, 29 March 1901, Page 5

BURGLARY IN HARRIS STREET

DYNAMITE USED AGAIN. ' By a somewhat singular coincidence Harris street has again been the scene Of a daring burglary, in which dynamite has been used. When the employees of Messrs Townsend and Paul opened that firm’s premises yesterday morning they found the large Milner safe had been broken open and the drawers forced some . time during the previous night. Very distinct traces remained to show that dynamite had been employed in bursting open the safe after a hole had been driven into the casing just above the lock. The work is evidently that of experts, the police say; differing in that respect from the attempt made some time ago to blow up the safe in Messrs Umfreville and Dcdd’s warehouse, not a hundred yards away. The men engaged in ithe burglary at ' Townsend’s are reported to have shown experience in leaving cheques and 1 coppers severely alone. The haul would have been greater but fortunately on Wednesdays not much - business is done at the salerooms, it being regarded as an off-day. The burglars left one or two common chisels behind them and the blade of a plane. How they gained an ettitranco to thepremises remains a mystery. A-theory has been formed that the person or persons concerned! in the robbery must have been secreted somewhere about the building when closing thne arrived. Some of Fitzgerald’s -circus_ men report that they heard an explosion about three o’clock in the morning. The police . stated last night that they had come to thd conclusion that the burglars had obtained access to the building through one of the upper windows, which they reached by creeping along the parapet. The exact amount taken was £27.