A GOLD-STEALER'S CONFESSIONS.

NZ Truth, Issue 72, 8 December 1906, Page 8

A GOLD-STEALER'S CONFESSIONS.

.■■ ■ ■ ♦ REMARKABLE REVELATIONS. Fortunes Filched from Mines and Mills. VI. . . ■ ■

The market for most of the stolen fcold, so far as the stealers are concerned, is provided by jewellers— or, rather, by people who set themselves up as jewellers, but who do very little more than "buy the stone and amalgam, treat it, and m turn get rid of it to the banks. Some of these have done marvellously well out of the business. *' * * The usual procedure is to open m some dusky, out-of-the-way shop, to exhibit a few paltry brooches, m the window, and under this thin pretence to keep the place open pretty well both day and night. It would never do for the so-called jeweller to open m a flash or showy way, or m a much-frequented part of the town, for the reason that those wishing to do business with him as an intermediary would then FIGHT SHY ' of him. On the other hand, the stealers would be afraid Of him if they felt, through a pretentious window displa - . he was there for any other purpose than that of goKL-buyinsr. and on the other hand the premises would have to he so situated that a person could enter and leave them without bern- observed. Dozens of shops have filled these conditions on .the Towers, and the proprietors of them . have benefited accordingly.': . •■■'■ •,'■ » * ■ ■ ■■• .'■■' '. Indeed, it would not .be ; too much to say that the buyers* m many instances, have acquired fortunes altogether m cx t ess of those possessed by any of the individual -, iistealers. But the days of the bu'yeir,' like the days of the stealer, have departed— or, at any rate, neither m regard to the stone nor- the amalgam. are they anytli'n": like what they- were. This is natural enough. With the diminution m . .. „, „ , THE STEALING- ITSELF, i ' a fact I have already dealt with, there must necessarily be a diminution m the amount of stuff offered for saX nnd m this wav the buyer fares m keeping with the stealer. I knew a number of these dealers. Oh? of them, starting along the lines I nave indicated, was doing very well. But certain members of his family, "in-

flated" by the sudden possession of the wealth that was coming their way, for the amount the father had accumulated Was some-thing quite new to them, would not give him any peace until he took a more imposing shoTv He did this, with the result that he very soon went bung. The fact is that because of the publicity of the new place, the .stealers would not go to him, and without them he had no hope of carrying on at all. The individual referred to again put on ■ ■ . HIS HUMBLE CAP, —I mean, he returned to the unpre* tentious premises which he had been induced to forsake— and after that, if he did not recover all his lost trade, he nevertheless did fairly well. There was another who had to give up business altogether. He had a good turnover. Suddenly, however, it began to fall off, arid before long it slumped away to nothing. • • • The reason for this change was that the stealers heard that he had been talking a little too much, and they fought shy of him accordingly. I do not think that he himself ever learnt why he was given the go-by. If m this I am correct, theae lines, if they come under. his notice m Brisbane, where he has been for the past 18 months, will be read by him with considerable interest. By the way, there were a lot of SPURIOUS COINS m circulation' on the Towers two years ago, and, rightly 'or wrongly, these were attributed to my Brisbane friend of to-day. Perhaps he may supply "Truth" with a word or two of interest on this subject. Then there was the person— l do not call them jewellers, for the name, to those like myself m the know, is absiirdrwho 'raised the price paid to the stealers from £2 to £3 per ounce (gold, of course). He is now living m Sydney, and it, is known that before leavinc the Towers, ■ where he opened with .practically nothing at all, ' he could sign his name to a cheque for anything .from ' . £10,000 to ; £15,000. : : I also knew a man. who, after putting m six or Eleven years on the

Towers, was able to return to Great Britain, where lie has his motor and is living m the greatest style. While, however, moat of the gold is got rid of through so-called jewellers, there are many other channels through which it has been sold. *. • * For instance, I knew an assayer — whether or not he is still on the field is quite another question— who must have made thousands of pounds m this way. It can be readily understood that such a man, with a leaning m this direction, would have everything m his favor. He could buy the amalgam or the gold, treat it, and then dispose of it to the "banks without exciting the , LEAST SUSPICION. Or, if suspicion ever did float his way, it would, m his case of all cases, be the most difficult thing m the world to sheet home anything m the way. of theft to him. Before dealing with the inability of the- police to punish the stealers and their accomplices— that is to say, the buyers— l would like to relate a little incident not wholly out of place here. There was a cer- , tain stealer— one of the two men, by the way, who had designs on the life of Detective McQuaker, a matter referred to m a previous article— who had a very enterprising wife. "Dollying" the gold is a process of wounding it up, so as to separate the gold from the stone, and m doing this there is always' more or less noise. Stealers, to prevent their neighbors from hearing this, often take the 9tone out to some quiet place m the. bush, and do the dollying there. I have known the woman referred to, dressed up m MALE ATTIRE,. to accompany her husband into the bush, Sunday after Sunday, to there assist him m his work. The husband who was a singularly handsome, c'en erous fellow, began his Towers career by putting m between ten and twelve months m a certain mine. So well did he use his time that he was then able to buy into one of the best hotels on the field. * * ' • I estimate that he must have stolen from £40 to £50 worth of gold every week for the whole of the period mensioned. He failed m the hotel. The moment that his wife heard that danger was threatening m this direction she went to the bank and drew out. £100. She hid put this m m .. her own name, it transpired, out of the gold HE HAD STOLEN before, he went into business, and without his even missing it -of such a character wcire his operations— from the stolen treasure he was handling. The two of them eventually went to West Australia. There are many difficulties m the way of getting convictions for gold-stealing. The principal of these, however, is that of identifying the'amalgam or the stone. ■■ . \ . • • « ' • It is not sufficient to find the amalgam or the stone on the person after . he has left the mine or mill m which he has been working. "Possession of the stuff," remarked, m my hearing, a person well qualified to sneak en this point, "without being able to cive a reasonable excuse for the pos; session of it, does not constitute an offence." Something much more m the way of DIRECT EVIDENCE (1), with-, regard, to the. identificar tkm or ownership of the stuff, and (2) with regard to the theft of it by the person upon whom it was found— is wanted, and it is this that is but rarely to be got. , • •■ • Then there are cases where the police, after slowly and laboriously working up everything m the way of bringing off a successful prosecution, are met with difficulties from the directors themselves. Indeed, directors have been known to actually interfere to the extent of quashing the impending arrests and char™* I will give you an instance of two of these. There was a certain bicycle shop, or alleged bicycle shop, where from six to a dozen amalgamators used to meet every night. The proprietor' of the place had fixed up a retort, and, FOR THE PICKINGS he himself got out of it, the amalgamators w&re allowed to treat their stuff there. Word of what was going on reached the police, who/ after watohing the premises' for a considerable time, finally completed their .arrangements for a descent on the place while operations were m progress. Prior to this the directors ,ot the mine, whence the amalgam was being stolen, had been informed of what was brewing. It was neceasary to do this m order to make the prosecution complete. But the night before the thing was to eventuate it was discovered that the proposed haul included a friend or relative of one of the directors, and that as a result • this director had gone out of his way to blow the The efforts of the police were therefore entirely frustrated. There was another case where three youn'- fellows were CAUGHT RED-HANDED at the Syndicate Mill, and because one of them had a relative, or a friend, or something of the kind, amongst the directors, they, • too, were allowed to go sCot free. Over and above all these difficulties there is. possibly, a greater one stillnamely, that of getting «,» jury of miners to convict one of their number of stealine. While they j:ee nothing wrong m the appropriation of a company's gold, the same men, curiously rnough, would nevertheless consider it dishonest to shirk a, debt, however small, contracted m the ordinai'y course of affairs. Indeed, the position with regard to prosecutions for goldstealing is eloquently illustrated by the fact that, practically speaking, there has never m the history of the Towers, been a conviction for the offence.' *■ • * Besides the technical difficulties with which I have shown the police to be confronted, there is, m short, the fact that the men are wonderfully sympathetic with one- another. A conviction m the case of a particular indidual would be treated by them very much m the light of a conviction a-p-ainst the lot of them . Under these ] circumstances, a verdict, so far as + he i men have it m their power to ! GIVE OR REFUSE > it, is something the authorities are never li'xelv to «vt. The miner? very much resent, nnv imputation of stealin? despite the fact that vl.ey are all

perfectly well aware of the extent to which it has been carried on among them. Some time ago the Government, at the instance of the Charters Towers Chamber of Commerce, introduced a .Gold-Buyers' License Bill. The effect of this would have been to restrict the legal purchase of gold to approved individuals, and m that way to have interposed a very decided check to the present free-and-easy i means of disposal of the treasure— a means which if it is not actually responsible for the magnitude the traffic has assumed, is certainly m no way a barrier to it. What was the fate of the measure ? Such a hullabaloo did the miners kick up by the holding of public INDIGNATION MEETINGS and m other ways that the Government had to entirely abandon its proposed legislation. The Bonnie Dundee Mill is, mostly, if not wholly, the property of Mr E. H. T. Plant; at present, a member of the Queensland Legislative Council, and m justice to the employees of it I would like to say that the popular opinion is that there has never been a single ounce of gold taken from it. Some of the hands 'have been with Mr Plant far from 20 to 30 years. Practically the lot of them are old and tried servants-; they are well paid, and m this way the mill has come to enjoy trje' unique reputation of being the only one. on the field .from which the gold has not— at some time or other —been: diverted into DARK, DEVIOUS, AND DISHONEST channels. Aty the close of my remarks m one of the preceding articles . I referred to the matter of stamps. With the exception of a few, neither the neople on the Towers nor elsewhere have the least idea of the extent to ■which the Government is being defrauded by the re-use of stamps recmired m connection with' the trans!'fer of scrip. Scrip is merely equivaj lent to a receipt proving the holder's interest m the particular mine for which it has been issued, and this receipt, so to speak, has to be stamped according to the value it represents. Stamped scrip thus comes to be held by the m mine secretaries m enormous quantities, and the fraud is perpetrated by erasing the stamps from the scrip m connection. with which they were originally vised and then using them m regard to other scrip for THE SECOND TIME. Such opportunities as these are exploited by ascertain class of secretaries and others, employed m other offices and elsewhere, with whom these secretaries deal. Let me tell you something I myself have teen. A cer- | tain shareholder had a lot of this used-up scrip (for when a mine goes buna; the scrip used m connection with it and held by the secretary is practically thrown aside), and one Sunday morning I was present while, a person m this secretary or sharebrokor's employ removed from old or disused scrip as much as £75 worth of stamps. I also had it from his own lips that the person with whom he. was dealing— a person, that is, other than the sharebroker for whom he was working— was giving him onethird the price of them (£25.). The stamps were removed with a ■ chemical solution, the only defect about which, m separating them from the scrip and m taking out the office stamp mark, was to slightly dull the original color of them. ALL THE, PARTICIPANTS m this secret form of enrichment" pass themselves off as stamp collectors. Such a device is absolutely necessary. For ,example, I know of one • case where, through the reconstruction of a company, about £5000 worth of stamps were to be destroyed, and it was only through the person who wanted them putting m a plea of this kind (namely, that he was a philatelist) that he was able" to get possession of them and then work off once more— to the advantage of himself and those associated with him, and to the corresponding disadvantage of the Government, for the reason that the G6vemment was thus defrauded out of the purchase of new stamps to that amount. I have already remarked that the , number of stamp collectors on the Towers is ciuite surprising. Also, that among them are some individuals who, m pretending to have a taste m this playful, artistic direction, have been A CONUNDRUM to those who knew them only for the hard-gritted, grinding individuals that they are. But m the light of the foregoing it will be seen that there is nothing to wonder at m the popularity of philately on the Towers, or the class of people who are enrolled under the banner of it. (Concluded.)