THE CAPE TOWN CRIMES.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 1 October 1901, Page 4

THE CAPE TOWN CRIMES.

Murder and Robbery Rampant and Unpunished.

(From the “Daily Mail’s” Correspondent). Capetown at the present time is the scene of a carnival of crime without pncedcnt in its history. It bus by slow degrees, and by their banishment from other centres of South Africa, become the happy hunting ground of bands of desperadoes who stick at nothing to gain their ends. The unwelcome visitors have established a veritable reign of terror, and the public and the authorities are at their wifs’ end to discover means for circumventing the machinations of the robbing and the murdering gangs.

The carnival is of recent devolopemont. It commenced some months ago with the murder of a bank manager in the suburbs in broad dayiight. The murderers wore never detected. Then jewel robberies occurred in tho principal thoroughfares of the city, and in no single case wore the thieves discovered. Jewellery to tho value of thousands of pounds has been stolen on several separate occasions, and there the matter ended. Eobhcrics of large sums of money took place while pay clerks at d others were leaving tho city banks with :ho weekly wages for tho employees.

Then a perfect epidemic of burglary set. in, and houses were ransacked by the score. Next, more murders took place, and latterly robberies and brutal outrages have been committed at the local Mansion House corner, the centre of the tramway system, a portion of the city wed lighted and much frequented at all hours of the day and night.

The police are powerless. The force has been thinned down by the war and other causes until the authorities have to confess that no more than ten men can be spared for night duty throughout the city. The people are crying out for more protection - There is talk of lynch law being established under the direction of the better class of young men who have served in the Town Guard, and who arc prepared, if the Government bo so minded, to form a corps of 500 to patrol the town in relays for the purpose of dealing in summary manner with these disturbers of the general peace. One of the blackest features of the epidemic is the wholesale robbery of men who, having come down from the front, get paid off in Capetown. I learn from a high official source that hundreds of these men have been waylaid in the streets, beerhouses, and so-called restaurants of the city and drugged, robbed, and battered übou-.

The Government have decided to import from England a considerable number of police olllcers and detectives, and the rate of wages will be high. The carnival is one of the legacies of the war.