LOST BICYCLES

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 8734, 16 May 1914, Page 8

LOST BICYCLES

PRODIGIOUS CROP IN HANDS OF POLICE. CASUAL CHRISTCHURCH WHEELERS. Special to the “ Times.” CHRISTCHURCH, May 15.

A philosophical gentleman, wJio wandered round to tho police station this morning in a useless quest for a stolen bicycle, delivered himself of the opinion that tho best w-ay to check the activities of the bicycle thief would be to make away with the bicycles of Mr H. W. Bishop, S.M., and Mr T. A. B. Bailey, S.M., and throw them in the river. He apprehended that thereafter there would not be such soft hearts on the bench for this particular offence.

Not that the police are backward in the recovery of stolen bicycles, or the pursuit of offenders. The watchhousckeeper is kept busy cataloguing and describing tho machines that find their w.ay to the station.

There are .a hundred and twenty bicycles unclaimed in the little back shed at the station. Three of them came from Rangiora tied together. It is supposed that they were casually picked up in Christchurch, ridden to Rangiora and discarded there.

There are new bicycles and old skeletons pnd spare parts at the police station. There never was such a prolific crop before, and. yet the. strange part of it is that the owners fail to turn up, all of which leads to the question how so much stealing and lending can go unchecked. Tho police believe that a regular trade goes on in stolen bicycles, and they would dearly like to see secondhand dealers in bicycles put under tho provisions of tho Second-hand Dealers Act, under which they would be compelled to give an account of every second-hand machine they handle. This reform, however is long in coming. It was put forward some’time ago, and “turned down” from Wellington.