TEN YEARS IN GAOL.

Ohinemuri Gazette, Volume XXII, Issue 2785, 3 May 1911, Page 3

TEN YEARS IN GAOL.

AMAZING CAREER OF

SWINDLING

Felix Franz Alfred Ogilvie, thirty-

seven, described as an engineer, a German subject, who pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court, London, last month, to six indictments, including bigamy, false pretences, and administering a drug to Maud Ethel Sara Jeeves with intent to steal her property, was sentenced by Mr Justice Darling to ten years' penal servitude.

The prisoner was charged with marrying Maud Jeeves and Ellen Maria Caspars, his lawful wife being then alive, with obtaining money by false pretences from George Tunstall Coleman ; unlawfully converting £245 to his own use ; and with stealing jewellery and money belonging to Maud Jeeves. Addressing the prisoner his lordship said : I have in my time tried a good many people, but never anybody qf quite your type. You are a man very well instructed, having a good knowledge of many languages. It is because you are so well instructed that you have been able to swindle people in the most in genious fashion. You have pleaded guilty to certain offences and have wrtiten in explanation of your conduct a most remarkable maniiesto, which I have read nothing like, except in the romances of the elder Dumas, but I am told it is perfectly true as the police have been able to investigate. .

You were born in Germany, of a Scotch-Irish family. You , enlisted in the Royal Artillery; and then you somehow got into the Black Watch. You deserted from the Black Watch and you enlisted in another Scotch regiment. You were discovered to be a deserter from the Black Watch, and were sent back to that regiment.

You ingeniously misconducted yourself and were dismissed trom the regiment with ignominy, and then you entered on a career ot crime which has

never stopped until you were taken into custody on this offence. 1 can hardly give a catalogue of the offences in all parts of Europe and South America of which you confess yourself guilty.

You are also charged, and there are warrants against you, tor other offences. It you consent, I can take into consideration those offences, and you will not then be arrested and punished for them. Do you wish me to do so ? Prisoner: Yes. The judge said he would do so. He had prisoner's appeal for consideration, and a most plausible one it was ; but a man who had lived so many years in crime did not suddenly become honest and decent and respectable.»

The sentences he was about to pass were to run concurrently. For obtaining money by false pretences Irom Mr Coleman the sentence would be eighteen months, with hard labour. For stealing the rings frpm Miss Jeeves, eighteen months ; converting to his own use the money with which he was entrusted, eighteen months ; feloniously marryins? Ethel Jeeves, eighteen months; feloniously marrying Ellen Maria Caspars, penal servitude for ten years. Mr Travers Humphreys, in stating the case for the prosecution, said the six indictments ranged from January, 1909, tb January of this year. The prisoner waS"a German subject and was born in East Russia.

The prisoner's real marriage was in 1905 in San Francisco. The second marriage resulted in consequence of a matrimonial agency appointments with Miss Jeeves, whom he told he was a mining engineer from Mexico and a rich man. He married her on January 28th at St. Albans Parish Church.

They stayed at the Midland Hotel, St. Pancras, and in the morning he left her, saying he was going to get some clothes. He came back to breakfast induced his wife to take some snuff for her cold. . She did so, and shortly after went into a stupor, and was found at seven o'clock in the evening by the chamber-maid. Her dressing-ease had been rifled and her jewellery valued at and all the money, £8, stolen by the prisoner.

Counsel relates how in a boardinghouse near Baker-street in 1910 prisoner met Miss Caspars. He married her, hot rowed .£55 from her brother by means of a trick, and induced a friend of hers, a Miss Vaughan, to let him have

,£243 for investment, of which he only returned £$o s admitting that he spent the rest. The Judge : He tells very frankly, in his biography, where he spent it. He spent it generally the same night in the disreputable carousals.

Chief inspector Bower said prisoner was wanted at Liverpool, where he opened an account at Farrow's Bank with a cheque which he himself printed drawn on a bank which did not exist. He induced the manager to advance him ,£SO, and because ot this the manager had been dismissed. There was

also another case' ot a gentleman in London, Mr Hapgood, from whom he got but that gentleman was now in America. The Judge : It's a most extraordinary way of getting money. I think it better not to explain, for other people may make use of it. It is very simple and very ingenious. Don't you say how it's done. In answer to the judge, the witness said prisoner spoke French, Spanish, Italian, German, and a little Portugese.