NEW “BLACK MARIA”

Taranaki Daily News, 4 September 1935, Page 7

NEW “BLACK MARIA”

PLANE USED FOR FIRST TIME. HISTORY MADE IN ENGLAND. Two men—a detective and a prisoner—recently made one of the most important additions to British legal history since the anest of the notorious Dr. Crippen on the high seas by means of wireless, says the News-Chronicle. This was revealed somewhat casually at Blackpool Police Court when a waiter, James Stanley Anderson, aged 32, of Manchester, pleaded guilty to embezzling £llo® from the Blackpool Tower Company. Mr. H. E. Derham, the chief constable, stated that Anderson had previous convictions, but had gone straight for the past eight years. Along with two other men, he applied under a false name to the Tower Company in July for employment as a waiter, and was engaged at 5s a day, plus food and “tips.” After collecting 30s from customers, he (disappeared, but was arrested by the Isle of Man police at Ramsey. He was brought back from there by Detective Frank McKenna, who travelled to and from the Isle of Man by aeroplane at a total cost of £3 15s. Anderson was bound over for 12 months, and was ordered to pay £6 6s expenses by the end of September. , Behind this bare summary, however, there is a background of enterprise that has created a precedent, and which will, no doubt, give the Home Office and Scotland Yard something to think over in the way of “privacy for prisoners. Anderson was arrested at Ramsey on a Saturday morning, and when the Blackpool police were notified of this by telephone. Detective Frank McKenna was instructed to go there and “collect his prisoner. The next boat was not due. to leave Liverpool until midnight, arriving at Douglas on Sunday morning. As there was none back again until Sunday midnight, it meant an idle day for the officer on Sunday, followed by an all-night crossing of the Channel. It would have been 8 a.m. on Monday before he and Anderson arrived at Blackpool—an interval of about 48 hours from the time the telephone message was received from the Isle of Man. As an experiment, the officer decided to travel by air. He left Stanley Park Aerodrome, Blackpool, at 10 a.m. on the Saturday, and was back again, with Anderson lodged in the Blackpool cells, at 4.30 the same afternoon! Thus for the first time in Britain, an aeroplane was used as a “Black Maria,” and Detective McKenna became a pioneer in a new type of “flying” squad. And, as Anderson has to foot the bill, it will have cost nothing for the trip.