TRAM CONDUCTOR ROBBED

Stratford Evening Post, Volume I, Issue 80, 13 March 1931, Page 8

TRAM CONDUCTOR ROBBED

ATTACKED BY TWO MEN LEFT UNCONSCIOUS ON LINE Two theives hoarded a tram at Bondi, Sydney, late one night recently, and after battering the tram conductor into insensibility, robbed him of his bag and left him lying unconscious on the tramline. The police say they believe that a woman was implicated in the robbery and acted as a decoy. Bound for the Waverley depot, the tram left North Bondi at about 11.30 p.m. in charge of Cecil Cooper. E. A. Ward was the conductor. When nearing a stopping place the driver noticed a woman alight from a car, A railway-hound tram was in front of the depot car, but the woman allowed it to pass and signalled Cooper to stop. She boarded the tram and sat. in the rear compartment. The conductor was seated in the front of the tram and there were no other passengers on board. When the tram reached a deep cutting some distance further on, two men boarded the car. Both entered the rear smoking compartment. Mr. Ward moved down the footboard with the intention of collecting the fares. That was the last the motorman saw of him. At the end of the cutting the woman alighted. She had travelled two stops. When the tram reached the depot, some minutes later the driver found that both the men and the conductor had disappeared. Several minutes after the depot tram had yassed through the cutting the driver of a following city-bound tram noticed a man lying near the rails. He stopped. The man was Mr. Ward. He was lying a few inches from the rails and was bleeding profusely from severe wounds in the head. He was unconscious. His bag, which contained about £3, was missing.

It is believed that as the car passed through the cutting the two men flung themselves upon the conductor, threw him to the ground, punched and kicked him unmercifully until he lost, consciousness, robbed’ him of his day’s takings and aecamped.