CAPE TOWN TERRORISED.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 24 October 1901, Page 4

CAPE TOWN TERRORISED.

Cipe Town is the scene of a carnival of crime without precedent in its history (according to tho ‘Mail’s’ correspondent). It has 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 carnival is of recent development. It commenced some months ago with tho murder of a bank manager in the suburbs in broad daylight. The murderers were never detected. The jewel robberies occurred in the principal thoroughfares of the city,

and in no single case were the thieves discovered. Jewellery to the value of thousands of pounds has been stolen on several separate occasions. _ Then a perfect epidemic ot burglary set in. and bouses were ransacked by the score. Next more murders took pine 3, and I t ;eny robberies and bruin ou rngu;- have been committed. The poles are powerless. The force has been thinned down by the war and other causes un’il the authorities have to confess that not mote than ten men can be spared for night doty throughout the cby. 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 are prepared if the Government be 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.