“CAT” BURGLARS.

Taranaki Daily News, 8 April 1925, Page 8

“CAT” BURGLARS.

THEFTS BY DARING MEN. SILENT VISITS AT NIGHT. I London has of late suffered from • | number of burglaries in which the • criminal has given evidence of remark- | able agility in effecting an entrance into I the upper floors of houses of well-to-do people. Quito recently one of the moat daring crimes of the “cat-burglar,” as the thief is called, was carried out at the house of Mr. T. T. Craven, in Kennaington Palace Gardens, whore jewellery, money, and silver worth I about £3oo<i were, taken. The thief climbed a stack- pipe on the front of the house, ignoring the risk of being seen from the roadway and. the bouses opposite. Mort of the stolen property belonged to Lieut-Colonel A. O. L. Kindersley, CJM.G., and Mrs. Kinder j sley, of Yarmouth, Isle of Wright, who I were staying with Mr. T. Craven. PACKED IN STOLEN CASE. | Colonel Kindersley and his wife waps I sleeping in a bedroom on the first floor, i about 20ft. from the ground. They roi tired to rest shortly after midnight, I and beard nothing more until the aeri vants aroused them early the following i morning. Finger-prints showed that the ■ burglar scaled the front of the house and I entered the bedroom window. He also visited a dressing room, where ho secured the colonel’s O.M.G. Order. Then he went downstairs and stole a suitcase, in which, it is presumed, he carried away his booty. j No one hoard the slightest sound, and the first discovery that the house had been burgled was when the maids found the front door open. The missing property included a gold locket and chain, with pearls and sapphires, containing a photograph of • little girl; a necklace of 185 pearls, with a single-stone diamond olaajs valued at £l<XXi; diamond broodies, diamond bar brooch, set with sapphires and rubies; a gold cigarette case, over £3OO in Treasury notes, and valuable articles of jewellery. , PRIZED PHOTO TAKEN. ■Mrs. Kindersley was especially die* tressed at losing the locket., as it eo»tains a portrait of her little dead daughter. “1 would give almost anything to get it back,” she said sadly. Apparently the burglar found hie booty too heavy, for a bog coutainiaf some of the missing property was found by a messenger boy under some leaves in Kensington Gardens. “Cat (burglar" methods were also employed at Ash lead the same night. While the family of Mr. Rennie, of Ashley Court, Ashtead, were at dinner, the house, which stands in en isolated part of Ashtead Woods, was entered T'iie thief climbed a pipe, broke i«te Mrs. Rennie’s bedroom, and took • Russian eable stole worth £2009 and a chinchilla stole worth £lOOO, as well as jewellery. He also visited Mr. Rennie’s bedroom and took 441 £1 Treasury notes from a dressing table drawer. The total value of the booty was about £4OOO. The doors were later found locked from iaside. UNHEARD BY ELEV EN PEOPLE. “The thieves entered with extraordin* ary skill and silence because, although there were 11 people in all in the house at the time, not. ona of ua heard them,** said Miss Rennie, to a newspaper reporter. “We presume that entry was mode while we were at dinner. At any lima, my bedroom, with the things in it, wge all right at 7.30. Nobody entered H again until 8.45, when everything wae thrown about and in cdnfuslon, and the money and furs, which were valual.i* chinchillas and sables, were nifosiiiadAj “There is no doubt that the burghklH got into the house by climbing the walerpipe and forcing the bedroom /They went oil' by the same means, nHFi'iiflv wifliUiit r Round? 1