END OF FAMOUS FORGER

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVII, Issue 4923, 8 January 1926, Page 1

END OF FAMOUS FORGER

SUICIDE IN CELL 13AMERICAN CRIMINAL PENMAN. A man who was arrested in the Strand and taken to Bow Street on charges of forgery and attempted forgery on Barclay’s Bank, High Hplborn, was found dead in cell 13 in t*ie police station. He was, hanging from the hot-water pipes by a belt which he had taken frpm his overcoat. The man’s real name was John. Hurley, and he was arrested in a West End restaurant while dining with a woman. Before the man was placed in. the cells he was searched and found to be in possession of about £2OO. He had been charged with obtaining £3'so by means of a forged cheque. The police of many countries knew Hurley to have been one of the most expert criminal penmen in the world. He was born 42 years ago at Toronto. He first came into the hands of the police in Chicago, where lie was sentenced for theft of I'so dollars. Since then he had committed audacious, thefts in many parts of the world, and had been sentenced to imprisonment in Paris; Antwerp, Bristol, and London.

In 1916, using the alias of Bruce, he was sentenced to 14 years' penal servitude at the Old Bailey, and his conviction was .the result of a will that had been forged to obtain a loan from moneylenders. At .the trial a letter was produced from the Church of England chaplain of Antwerp Prison, in which he said that Bruce and another man had behaved in a, very heroic manner in assisting himself and his wife to escape from Antwerp during the bombardment. . Since then Hurley had specialised in the same form of crime, and he invariably succeeded in getting a woman. to cash the cheques in the belief that they were genuine.