Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Third of a Century.] MONDAY, MAY 18, 1914. "KLEPTOMANIA."

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume LXVI, Issue 11980, 18 May 1914, Page 4

Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Third of a Century.] MONDAY, MAY 18, 1914. "KLEPTOMANIA."

Kleptomania appears to be very prevalent among well-to-do people in England. It is a distressing disease, and is one that appears to attack only people of means, or of some standing in society. Should a common burglar plead "kleptomania" he would no doubt be sent to prison to be cured, but when a fashionable lady takes something from a shop and forgets to pay for it, the proprietor in most cases is loth to prosecute for fear of harming his business. "The Times," in an article on the ways of the3e palite chop-lifters, says that as many as forty pilferers have been detected at one shop in a single day, while the number of the undetected is probably still greater. The frailty manifests itself in many curious forms. A "certain well-known peeress" was known for a passion for stealing grapes. If she happened to be detected and reminded of the trifling fact that she had not paid for her basketful, it was her custom to treat the matter with the greatest hauteur and order the bill to be sent to her. A vicar of unblemished reputation had a penchant for expensively bound Church Services, of which he collected about £15, worth. He ,was arrested, but the medical evidence which" he enlisted in his behalf succeeded in convincing the Court that the cause of the trouble was simply a "brainstorm," and he was allowed to go unpunished, his reputation apparently, not being seriously damaged by the unfortunate occurrence. Amonjg the people arrested at a certain store within a short period for bookstealing may be mentioned the manager of a provincial bank and an Australian Army officer, who had come to England to take certain courses, and was taking, this means of getting text-books "on the cheap.'' Superb sangfroid was displayed by another soldier, an ex-officer of the Guards, who tried on a fur coat

in a shop,' and after strolling round in it for a while,' stepped into an adjoining room ' ' to have his hat ironed,'' and thence disappeared quietly from the scene. A few days afterwards he returned to have the hat really ironed, wearing the stolen coat. By this time he had probably; fortified himself with plenty of evidence to the effect that he had owned the coat for years, so nobody in the shop dared to say a word, knowing that to arrest a man on a charge of theft which cannot be proved is highly damaging to business. It is a remarkable thing that in these cases of "brainstorms," the victims are always sane enough to steal with remarkable intelligence, and also to conceal tho goods stolen. It is strange indeed, as a judge recently observed, that kleptomania is a disease which only attacks people when the police are at a distance. Perhaps the best treatment for a complaint is that prescribed by a magistrate, who, after listening to a lot of medical testimony in defence of one of these polite shop-lifters, said to the prisoner:—-"The evidence which I have heard convinces me that you are suffering from a severe attack of kleptomania; but as this is a disease which I have been put here by His Majesty's Government to cure, I regret to have to give you six weeks with hard labour. "