NOVEL SWINDLING.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume I, Issue 95, 15 June 1877, Page 3

NOVEL SWINDLING.

James Daly, described as a coachman, and Christopher Reiley, formerly employed as a footman, have for some time been accomplices in a career of theft on the Scotch railways, which has the rare merit of combining originality, daring, and simplicity. The success of their scheme is demonstrated by the fact that the articles of passengers' luggage which they are known to have appropriated are reckoned by thousands. The plan of operations adopted by Daly and Reily would appear to have been suggested to them by their previous occupations. The former played the part of master, being attired in a manner suitable to the station he affected; the latter served in the humble capecity of valet, with which he had previously been acquainted, displaying a profusion of bright bnttons on his coat and a cockade in his hat, for the purpose of disarming suspicion. We presume the ex-coachman always travelled in a first-class carriage and his quasi-servitor in an inferior section of the train. Immediately on their arrival at any given destination, which usually took place after sundown, the footman called a cab ; then, in attendance on hie pretended master, proceed with the coolest self-possession to the luggagevan, and amidst the hurry and confusion which usually characterises the claming of luggage by passengers on the platform of a British railway station, they both helped themselves to two or three of the most attractive portmanteaus, or trunks that they could conveniently abstract, placed them in the cab, and drove off to their hotel. It surely discloses a singular defect in passenger arrangements on our lines of railway that these two barefaced rogues should be able to continue their craft for so long and get possession of the personal luggage of travellers to an incalculable amount. As always happens in such circumstances, ultimately a most unlikely event led to their detection and arrest. The value of the property already proved to have been stolen by them, and traced by the police topawnshops and other places where they had either deposited it or converted it into money, exceeds ten thousand pounds. During the past month the Central Railway Luggage. Office, Ediugurgh, has been thronged with claimants from all parts of the country, and many of them readily succeeded in identifying their personal effects, which had unaccountably disappeared. But while the efforts of the authorities in the East of Scotland to recover the stolen packages have been , attended with satisfactory results, it was a marvellous and nuexpected clue, obtained by the detective force of Glasgow which led to the discovery of the offenders and the identification and recovery of the missing Aaluables, A black glazed leather bag was accidentally picked up in the Clyde by some men who were employed in a boat close to the Broomielaw Quay. This "find" was reported to the constable on the beat, who took the bag to the Marine Division Police office, when it was discovered it be filled with old letters, account books, and miscellaneous papers. A large number of the documents bore the names respectively, of' a merchant in Fife, gentleman in Liverpool, and a lady in Helensbury. A friend of the Fife gentleman residing in Glasgow, on

being communicated with, testified that a portmanteau belonging to his relative in fife had been lost at the close of December, en route from Edinburgh to Glasgow, The lady in Helengsburgh was waited upon, and she informed the detectives that she had lost a box two days previously. Moreover when the letters containing her name were produce, she at once recongnised them as forming part of thejjcontents of her travelling case, and she specofied articles of jewellery and clothing which were missing at the termination of her journey. A description of this property was publiohed in Ehinburgh and met the eye of a pawnbroker, at whose shop a gold brooch and bracelets belonging to the same lady had been pledged a few days before. He instantly informed the police, and the result was that Daily and Rielly were immediately opprehended. On there houses being searched, valises, portmanteaus, and pawn tickets to the value of £10;000 were found, and Daly and his wife confessed to burning £5,00 of foreign bound which they had stalen from a certain trunk. The various haunts frequently l>y the culprits were now ascertained without difficults by the and at eaah of these places piites of articles similar to thoses already mentioned were unearthed. Judning by the results of the investigation carried on hitherto, the stolen property would have been systematically distributed over the pawnshops throughout the length and breadth of Scotland. But for the casual discovery of the black leather bag in the Clyde, however the game of the thievs might have been protracted indefinitely.