BURGLARY BOOM.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 2171, 2 September 1920, Page 4

BURGLARY BOOM.

INSURANCE COMPANIES HARD HIT. Burglary insurance companies are very hard hit at the present lime. The whole of burglary underwriting jn respect of commercial premises, private dwelling houses, and personal properly is iira difficult position, as the number of robberies of all kinds is the greatest ever known, and the amount of the claims unprecedented.

The war has largely increased the number of criminals, according to an official of a leading insurance company. “If you wanted a stove or a saucepan at the front,” he said to a representationve of the London Times, “you rarely went through the long process of asking for it, hut purloined it from those who had it. The moral deierrent to dishonesty was absent; it was considered ‘the thing’ to do. Many of these people who have learned to “win’ things—as the soldiers describe it —easily at the front have returned with a perverted sense of meum and teum and an objection to working. They do not go in for ordinary burglary, but for Hat-breaking, which is a specialised and popular form of burglary. The lack of domestic servants has had a most injurious effect on the position of the insurance companies, as the flat-breaker always waits until the occupants are absent. The only thing that the householder can do is to put as many difficulties in his way as possible.’’