MYSTERIOUS THEFT.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 1019, 20 July 1911, Page 4

MYSTERIOUS THEFT.

DISAPPEARANCE OF VALUABLE JEWELLERY

The story of a daring robbery in the middle of the day, at Camden Town, was related in a London Court to Mr Paul Taylor, who had before him Herbert Archibald Cooper, 4t, and Charles Jarvis, 35, both of Camden Town, charged with being concerned in stealing from 73 High Street, Camden Town, five boxes containing 137 gold rings, the trade value of which was ,£2B 10s, the property of Messrs Williamson and Co. (Limited), wholesale jewellers. According to the evidence, George Thomas Smith, a traveller in the service of the prosecuting firm, called upon Messrs Mears and Co., jewellers, about midday on Monday, soliciting orders. He had a stock of jewellery with him, enclosed in a number of small boxes, and these he placed on a chair in the shop. Then he entered into conversation with Mr Mears, and became so engrossed in his efforts to do business that he entirely lost sight of the fact that the bulk of stock was behind him, and within reach of people entering and leaving the shop. At the end of the conversation he turned round to pack up, and to his great surprise he discovered that five boxes of rings, the trade value of which was 10s, had entirely disappeared. Convinced that he had been robbed by someone entering the shop while his back was towards him, he at once notified his loss to the police, and information was circulated amongst the pawnbrokers of the district. As a result Sergeant Wild, of the Y. Division, was called to a pawnbroker’s in Seven Sisters road on Tuesday evening, where he found the prisoner Cooper leaving the shop with a ring in his hand. The officer challenged him as to where he got the ring from, and Cooper replied that he bought it in Fore Street the day before from a man to whom he gave 3s. Being hard up, he was trying to get a bob or two on it.

When at the police station he produced twelve other rings, and said a man gave them to him to sell. In reply to the charge, he said, “ I have not the least doubt they were stolen.” On Cooper he found £1 ios gold, £i 6s silver, and is iid bronze ; also thirteen rings and nineteen pawntickets relating to the thirty-three other rings.

Early the next morning, Detective-Sergeant Seymour went to Rowton House, and found the prisoner Jarvis in bed. He told him he was making enquiry about a man giving the name of Jarvis, who called at 73 High Street, on Monday, between twelve and one o’clock, for a watch he had left to be repaired. After the man left the shop five boxes of rings, containing 137 rings, were missed, and he was going to arrest him for being concerned with Cooper, who was then in custody, for stealing them. He replied that he did not go to the shop for his watch. Afterwards he met Cooper, who asked him to get him a job. He had been drinking all day. He knew nothing, he said, about the rings. George Smith, an assistant to Messrs Mears, recognised the prisoner Jarvis as the man who called for his watch on Monday when the traveller was in the shop with his stock. Witness was called away to another part of the premises, and he left Jarvis at the counter. Detective-Sergeant Seymour informed the Court that the whole of the property pledged had been idencifisd by the prosecutor. The prisoner Cooper had told him that morning that Jarvis was not the man from whom he received the rings. But earlier Cooper had said that the man might be known by the fact that he had a new pair of brown boots, and a pair of such boots were found by witness in Jarvis’s lodgings. Prisoners, who pleaded not guilty, were remanded.