NOVEL SWINDLING.

Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 320, 2 May 1877, Page 4

NOVEL SWINDLING.

Jaraes Daly, described as a coachman, and Christopher Reilly, formerly employed as a footman, have for some time been accomplices in a career of theft on the Scotch railways, which has the rare merit of combining originality, daring, and simplicity. The success of their scheme is demonstrated by the fact that the articles of passengers' luggage which they are known to have appropriated are reckoned by thousands. The plan of operations adopted by Daly and Reilly would appear to have been suggested to them by their previous occupations. The former played the part of master, being attired in a manner suitable to the station he affected; the latter served in the humbler capacity of valet, with which he had previously been familiar, displaying a profusion of bright buttons on his coat and a cockade on his hat, for the purporc of disarming suspicion. AVe presume the ex-coachman always travelled in a first-class carriage, and his quasiservitor in an inferior section of the train. Immediately on their arrival at any given destination, which usually took place after sundown, the footman called a cab ; then, in attendance on his pretended master, proceeded with the coolest self-possession to the luggage van, and amidst the hurry and confusion which usually characterise the claiming of luggage by passengers on the platform of a British railway station, they both helped themselves to one or two of the most attractive portmanteaus or trunks that they could conveniently abstract, placed them in the cab, and drove off to their hotel. It surely discloses a singular defect in passenger arrangements on our lines of railway that these two barefaced rogues should be able to continue their craft for so long, and get possession of the personal luggage of travellers to an incalculable amount. As always happens in such circumstance', ultimately a most unlikely event led to their detect;on and arrest. The value of the property already proved to have been stolen by them, and traced by the police to pawnshops and other.places where they had either deposited it or converted it into money, exceeds ten thousand pounds. During the past month the Central Railway Luggage Office at Edinburgh lias been throng, d with claimants from all parts of the country, and many of them readily succeeded in identifying their personal effects, which had unaccountably disappeared. But while the efforts of the authorities in the East of Scotland to recever the stolen packages have been attended with satisfactory results, it was a marvellous and unexpected clue, obtained by the detective force of Glaspo.v, which led to the discovery of the offenders and the identification and recovery of the missing valuables. A black glazed leather bag was accidental!}' picked up in the Clyde by some men who were employed in a boat close to the Brooinielaw Quay. This " find " was reported to the constable on Ithe beat, who took the bag to the Marine Division Police office, when it was discovered to be filled with old letters, account books, and miscellaneous papers. A large number of the documents bore the names, respectively, of a merchant in Fife, a gentleman in Liverpool, and a lady in Helensburgh. A friend of the Fife gentleman residing in Glasgow, on being communicated with, testified that a portmanteau belonging to his relative in Fife had been lost at the close of December, en route from Edinburgh to Glasgow. The lady in Helensburgh was waited upon, and she informed the detectives that she had lost a box on the same line two days previously. Moreover, when the letters containing her name were produced, she at once recognised them as forming part cf the contents of her travelling case, and she specified articles of jewellery and clothing which were missing at the termination of her journey. A description of this property was published in Edinburgh, and met the eye of a pawnbroker, at whose shop a gold brooch and bracelets belonging to the same lady had been pledged a few day 3 before. He instantly informed the police, and the result was that Daly and Reilly were apprehended. On their houses being searched, valises, portmanteaus, and pawn tickets to the value of LIO,OOO were found, and Daly and his wife confessed to burning LSOO of foreign bonds which they had stolen from a certain trunk. The various haunts frequented by the culprits were now ascertained without difficulty by the detectives, and at each of these places piles of articles similar to those already mentioned were unearthed. Judging by the results of the investigation carried oa hitherto, t'ie stolen property would seem to have been systematically distributed over the pawnshops throughout the length and breadth of Scotland. But for the casual discovery of the black leather bag in the Clyde, however, the game of the thieves might haye been protracted indefinitely.