WOMAN'S CRIMINAL LIFE.

Shannon News, 9 April 1926, Page 3

WOMAN'S CRIMINAL LIFE.

Although still in the early forties, a woman who passes under the name oi j Maria Freeman has just gone prison known to boast that she has lingers like feathers, and she is inordinately proud of the title, "The Queen of Pickpockets. 1 ' Her criminal career las no parallel among -convicted .women of modern times, and she has been a confirmed thief from childhood Man. freeman came up at the Guildhall as 'a suspected . person and \Pjeaded "guilty" forthwith.— According to the evidence of Det.-sergt. Voss, of Bishopsgate, the woman loitered at omnibus stops at Aldgate, Cornhill, and Liverpool street, in order to rob girls, and women of their purs'cs. **°™£ Jte's been known to the police for many S» as a persistent and clever purseiateher. She has appeared in every police court in London, and has also Igured in the dock in many provincial 'police courts, including Perth, Edinburgh, Manchester, and Glasgow, fene las also been on the Continent many times, where she is known to the Pans and Belgian police. Freeman, as an undesirable alien, has been thrice expelled from the Continent, where she passed under the alias of Mirka Living. The woman has such a light touch that she is able to open a handbag and steal a ■nurse lying on a woman's lap in a Crowded omnibus. Thousands of purses have passed through Maria Freeman s feather-like fingers during the past quarter of a century- She is a woman of mystery, and the police have not been able to probe deeply into her past, over which she seems anxious to draw a veil. She is believed to be an » ed woman born in London, of Scottish parents. She has been convicted 22 times, and has been sentenced to penal ■servitude on three or four occasions. Onee, at Perth, she was sentenced.to four years' penal servitude. Her fiist conviction was in 1894, when she was 12 Freeman was a familiar figure in London's market-places, ; where she practised among r 2 Bemarking that accused had brought sorrow and distress to many a poor woman, Sir Charles Wakefield sen teneed her to three months' hard la rintir It was one of the worst cases against a woman he had ever heard.