WOMEN AS BURGLARS.

Timaru Herald, Volume XCVIII, Issue 18084, 2 June 1923, Page 4

WOMEN AS BURGLARS.

There is ?me phase of crime in Australia that is especially disquieting (writes a Sydney correspondent of an Auckland excJiange) - offences by women. Shoplifting is surprisingly prevalent, not only m the big city emporiums, but also in the suburban araperv establishments. Indeed, so numerous have cases of this kind become, that the Courts are now sending offenders to gaol, instead of punishing them with a line. The woman house-breaker, howevei, is a novelty in criminal circles. And, by a coincidence, on the day pretty Eileen Eyans (24), was sentenced in Melbourne to three years’ imprisonment public attention was also focussed on Louisa Muller, on whom a sentence of 18 months’ imprisonment was i passed These two women criminals trod widely dilferent paths to the dock. Blue-eyed Eileen plundered suburban houses, while Louisa, by clover climbing and divesting herself of her corsets, dropped through the roof of a city warenouse. Eileen knocked at suburban doors, and once she assured herself of the absence of the owner, broke the glass panels, and turned the handle, wound guilty of eight charges of housebreaking, and having eight prior convictions, Eileen wus also the dreaded indeterminate sentence. She heard her fate without flinching.