AM AMAZING CAREER.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 461, 1 May 1912, Page 3

AM AMAZING CAREER.

RACECOURSE SHARPERS' END

STRANGE DUAL PERSONALITY

When a motor car knocked down an elderly. well-dressed, gentlemanly man in Chapel street, Melbourne, last week, little did the passers-by who lifted the stricken victim know that they were helping into the hospital one of the men who was for years a worry and a trouble to the detective police. He died from fracture of the skull.

The victim was Frederick William Ogle, better known as "Lamerce," who did what no judge, no Cabinet, and no Governor has ever done in the history of Victoria in the mitigation and the curtailment of sentences imposed upon criminals by the laws of the State. Himself one of tlje most accomplished criminals of the last generation, he secured early release for numbers of similar scoundrels. A wine and spirit merchant, whose business extended throughout the north of Ireland, and who had his headuarters in Belfast, brought up his eldest son to carry it on when he should retire. The son was precocious, bright, nay, brilliant. He was the white-haired boy of his teachers, and the pride of his public school. It was only those who studied him carefully who -ealised that his stounding cleverness was mostly superficial; that while his brain was amazingly receptive, it had an almost more startling faculty for forgetting. The heroworshipping father had, however, been too generous in unloosening the purse strings, and the heir to a lucrative busniess speedily undeveloped extravagant habits. He lived luxuriously, and soon had to cudgel his inventive wits to keep out of the hands of his creditors. From Belfast he disappeared, and was next heard of in Victoria. Ogle had married the daughter of the Dutch Consul in Belfast, and had, when he embarked upon a life of villainy, adopted his wife's name. By attending country race meetings, by running illicit and illegal games, by stiffening horses, etc., he was able to live well and to maintain a cosy villa for his wife and children down at St. Kilda. His means of livelihood were most carefully screened from the inmates of his home. He devoted his leisure moments to a study of philosophy, to reading books of travel, and to elaborating a new theory of cosmic attraction.

On the raecourse he would cease from plundering credulous country people to remark that the book of Proverbs was the most liberal education any man could require. He was a faithful attendant at the church on Sundays. The man appeared to have two personalities, like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Through all his wrongdoing he was philosophical. On numerous occasions when fortune went against him on country courses he bolted with his bag and was often mobbed for welshing. Spells in goo! did not in any way break his nerve. He made Swanston street his special roving ground. Dressed very nattily and with a theatrical eye for the deceptive value of appearances, he would stroll up arid down, with his moustache waxed like that of a military man, and casually scrutinising the passers by. Instinct appeared to tell him which amongst the men from out back he could safely approach with hope of landing a stake. Rarely, indeed, did he make a mistake. The Swanston beat was reckoned to be worth at least £IOO a year to him. On one occasion he made a fly at bigger game. He ingratiated himself with people in high places, and was actually proposed as a member of the Melbourne Club. Two days before the ballot, the hand of the law descended heavily on his shoulders, and took him away to his Majesty's Club.

Lamerce outside saw a road ready to wealth with the co-operation of a relative who was serving a sentence in Pentridge for forgery. His qjick brain conceived a plan for lifting round sums of money from the friends of prisoners who wanted their sentences shortened. The two put their heads together, and in a few weeks' time the man who got IS months could, by sufficient payment, get his release in a year, or, if given three years, got out in perhaps eighteen months.

This new gold mine was yielding hucre dividends, and Lamerce was swell on the way to amassing competency, when a judge, walking down Coliins street one day, espied a man whom he knew he had sentenced for two years for assault and robbery, and who was enjoying liberty in six months. He instituted inquiries, and an examination of the documentary orders of the prison book was made. The relative was removed to another division, and Lamerce had to buy a roulette table and go back to the racecourse. He managed to keep beyond the grasp of the police till he got in touch with four clever magsmen in Sydney, and promptly formed what is known as "The Long Firm." They rented a big house; Lamerce ordered furniture and fittings and clothing. The firm sold these, and had quite a gay time until detectives arrived instead of shop vans, and charged them with conspiracy, and put them in Darlinghurst. His last sentence kept him in gaol until the end of 1911. From then until the time of his death he kept out of the clutches of the law. If he had been honest he could, with his address, brains, and courage, have scaled to any height. As it was, he died in the Alfred Hospital, unknown, unhonoured and unsung, and beneath his photo in the album of the C.I. Department appears the laccion legend- —'"Run down by a motor."