BIOGRAPH EXPOSES CRIME.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVI, Issue 1237, 25 April 1914, Page 4

BIOGRAPH EXPOSES CRIME.

Alter all the biograph lias its uses. When Samuel Eltolt -was sentenced to tour years’ penal, servitude lor being ii 1 ) accessory alter the fact in the Liverpool murder, his mother from tlm lloor ol the Court hysterically denounced the Judge tor cruelty. The halipenny daily ]);» jM-r.s published portraits of the youth, and very many people, finding a cherubic expression in his iaee, insisted that he had been harshly treated. An agitation was started to secure a reprieve, and Eltol't’s solicitors within, the ton days allowed under the criminal law. gave notice of an appeal against the sentence, lint within a week this notice was mysteriously withdrawn. The public, prying into the actions of the police, learnt that three detectives had gone down to Eltoft’s house., prised open the door with a shovel, and searched his room. When the ease was tried. El toft’s counsel stressed the fact that nothing incriminating had been found in his possession. The police. searched every nook and cranny of jiis bedroom,, and were again going away empty-handed, when one of their number remembered that he had seen a film, at the local hiograph in which the hollow space inside the post of a bedstead was used by a thief to conceal some stolen pearls. Inspired by this picture, the detectives dismantled the bedstead, and beneath the hollow of one of the brass knobs they found four halfsovereigns. The sentimentalists in Liverpool now realise why Eltoft’s appeal was withdrawn. But the seekers after coincidences will not be satisfied until they discover whether Eltoft, like the detective, had seen the biograph and been prompted to his novel hidingplace by its dramatic story.