CLEVER SWINDLER

Southland Times, Issue 21090, 23 May 1930, Page 11

CLEVER SWINDLER

SIXTEEN CONVICTIONS. . WOMAN AND HER DUPES. Peers, business men, and novelists have been among the dupes of a clever and fascinating woman swindler, with many aliases, who was sentenced at a 'London court in March to ten months’ imprisonment with hard labour. She pleaded guilty to five charges of obtaining goods and credit by false pretences, and asked that ten other similar charges should be taken into account.

The woman gave her name as Cynthia Sackville West, but that is only one of her many aliases. She has been convicted 16 times. Her real name is Nellie Ruth Munday. She has posed at various times as Lady Cynthia Sackville West, Lady Dashwood, Lady Markham, Lady Ross, and Lady John Ramsay. One of her victims, it is stated, was the late Miss Marie Corelli, from whom she obtained £lO. On another occasion, by posing as Lady John Ramsay, she called on Mrs Rice, an American, who was then living at Warwick Castle, and asked if it would be convenient for her “cousin, Princess Patricia,” to look over the castle. She was invited to tea, and after informing her hostess that she had lost her purse, found no difficulty in borrowing £2 and disappear* ing.

The woman has worn the daintiest of clothes, obtaining them with the same ingenuousness as she duped peeresses. She would take a room at a good hotel, and then visit a number of expensive shops, saying she had been recommended by the hotel manageress. She would select several things, and ask that they be sent to the hotel. Then, as an 'afterthought, as she was leaving the shop, she would decide to take one or more of the articles. She would then disappear. This quietly mannered and fascinating swindler, when she appeared in court, had lost all her fine clothes, but none of that ability to work on the sentimental weaknesses of human nature. She had a pathetic story to explain away her latest series of frauds. She admitted that«after She came out of prison last November she obtained a situation as a companion at Birchington, Kent, by a false reference.