THE WAGES OF SIN

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 17 November 1927, Page 9

THE WAGES OF SIN

CRIME THAT DOES NOT PAY MORE PRISON THAN PROFIT. CONFESSIONS BY CRIMINALS. Adam ’Worth, perhaps the greatest criminal of the past half-century, robbed other people of money and i<*-eTiery worth £600,000. Safecracking, diamond robberies, burglary—all came alike to him. At one time he owned a racing stable, a steam yacht, and had magnificentlyappointed flats in London and New York. Yet he died penniless. Between them, George White and Max Shinburn out of the Ocean Bank. Yet in 30 years each spent 25 in prison, and they. too. left nothing behind them. Goudie. the Liverpool bank clerk, defrauded the Bank of Liverpool of £170,000. but it profited him nothing, for what, he did not waste in betting other criminals got out of him by blackmail. George Manolescu. known as the ‘‘Prince of Thieves,” stole £30,000 in Faris. £-10.000 in Argentina, and thousands elsewhere. He travelled with a secretary and a valet, visited the best clubs, but eventually became poor, and was sentenced to a long term of imprisonment. He has written a book on his experiences in which ha confesses that crime docs not pay.

The newspapers constantly tell of huge hauls made by thieves. It has been stated that the value of jewellery stolen in London alone exceeds £1,000,000 a year, of which only about a quarter is recovered. Figures of this kind give unprincipled young men the idea that crime pays, but it is a mistaken impression. Jt was stated recently that the average earnings of four criminals who worked on a fairly largo scale were 12s, 14s. 19s 6d, and 25s a week respectively. Each spent about half his time in prison. Most thieves spend so much of their time in prison that the total amount of their thefts.does not average up to the wages of a junior clerk or an assistant in a small shop. Even when they are at libert- their earnings are not large. While planning and executing a burglary the robber spends weeks of such tense excitement that, when the job is caried through, be feels forced to take a holiday.

The brain and nerves relax, the erring man drinks and gambles, and probably falls into the hands of harpies, who prey on him till he is penniless. Then he must fix up another' ‘job,” and the whole dreary round is enacted all over again. Sooner or later he is caught anfl voes to prison for a long term. It must be remembered that the thief is always in the hands of the "fence,” or receiver, and never in any circumstances will he get more then onetliiru of the actual value of the -oods he has stolen. A typical case was that of Frederic Landau, who stole £lBOO worth of jewellery from a South African diamond merchant. He also stole a few notes. Less than a fortnight later he was caught changing one of the notes. He had already spent all the monev he got for the jewellery, which was about £3OO.

There is. however, one record of a man making burglary pay. This was a Frenchman named Chicot, who was arrested in Paris some years ago and charged with stealing linen. In his ronins was found a diary containing details of nearly 1500 burglaries. Chicot robbed small houses and his average haul was worth no more than £5. But ho told the police that lie “went to prison happily ” because be had saved a nice sum and hidden it

where they would never find it.