JEKYLL AND HYDE LIFE

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4862, 7 August 1925, Page 3

JEKYLL AND HYDE LIFE

CHURCH WORKER AND CRIMINAL. LEADS GANG OF CROOKS. % Few novelists could have imagined so amazing a character as Charles Crank Shaman (says the London Daily Mail). At Snaresbrook, Essex, where he lived in a large house, he was known as an elderly white-bearded man of pleasant and grandfatherly appearance, a devout churchman, and. staunch church worker. Actually he was a forger and receiver—a cunning criminal working in close co-opera-tion with an ingenious and successful gang pf international crooks who in a series of mailbag robberies obtained valuables worth nearly £2,000,000. His double life is illustrated by the lact that when a young man his effigy was burnt at Chelmsford after he had been mixed up in a most unsavoury scandal; in .1921 ho was awarded the Albert Medal by the King of the Belgians for philanthropic work. Shaman was admitted a solicitor in 1888. .

His association with the series of mailbag robberies began in 1921. On November 21 of that year a mailbag was mysteriously stolen in transit between Liverpool and Euston. The bag contained War and Victory Bonds, cheques, cash, and jewellery, the total value of which was at least £lOO,OOO. In one case, at least the man disposing of the bonds answered exactly to Shaman’s description. Later the gang made their master coup, when a mailbag which contained valuables believed to be worth not less than £1,000,000 wajs stolen between Antwerp and London. In one package in this bag were valuables worth £89,000. From 1923 onwards Sharman, who was apparently growing nervous, paid visits to the Post Office and purported to give information regarding the series of mailbag robberies. These inquiries, however, led to his undoing. In November, 1924, the Post Office handed over all the documents in the case to the Director, of Public. Prosecutions, who called in Scotland Yard. When Chief Inspector Gillan examined the documents he was stnuck by the number of references in them to Mr Sharman, and he decided to inquire about him. It is understood that the mailbag gang is now broken up.