£136,000 IN A MATCHBOX

Shannon News, 8 June 1926, Page 3

£136,000 IN A MATCHBOX

A FORTUNE LOST TO SAVE A THIEF. The recent return, anonymously, without a claim to the £I,OOO offered ; for its restoration, of a pearl necklace valued at £15,000, which was stolen from a. jewel case adds another chapter to the romance of rewards. In connection with a still more sensational robbery —that of a pearl necklace worth £136,000 —a reward was obtained in unusual circumstances. The wife of one of tne thieves, in-order to save her husband put the article into a matchboix, and dropped it into a gutter in the North of London.

It was found by a plumber's*, mate, who, having filled his pipe, discovered that he had not a match and picked up the box in the hope that it contained one. When he saw the necklace, he thought so little of it that lie tried to sell it for a bottle of Deer; but in the end he got the reward — \ several thousand pounds—offere'd for its recovery.

Equally rare was the sec/iei to an offer of £2OO for information regarding a man who fled with £5200 of his employer's money. Shortly afterwards a man entered a police station in the North of England and stated t that he had lost a bracelet worth £l2O for th e return which he was willing to pay £2O, though he came back a little later with the announcement that the article had, been found entangled in the dress of the woman who was wearing it.

The clerk Avho took the information thought there was something suspicious in the visitor's appearance. He informed a detective inspector, wlio proceeded to make inquiries. Before these were completed a tradesman told him that a man—apparently the visitor —had been making ,big purchases at his shop and had always paid cash, for them in notes, adding that he (the tradesman) would not take action in- the matter, and that whatever the police did must be on their own authority. '

, As the man who had lost a bracelet and the embezzler proved to one, he was arrested, whereupon he confessed his guilt. Th e shopkeeper then claimed the reward, and, on bringing an action to recover it, gained a verdict. Appeal Court, however, held that it should be divided between him and tli e detective. So in return for law costs amounting to about £267, that officer gained less £IOO, though subsequently he was presented with three hundred guineas, the result of a public subscription. _ , Many amazing reward incidents have happened after murders. Some years ago a ce.rtair rr.an was suspected, perhaps unjustly, of having killed a woman, and in \r& position he fled to a distant town, where he did a strange thing. He cased to be puT>iished in a newspaper circulating in his own district an advertisement to the effect that he was quite aware of what he was uspected, and that a little later he would surrender himself. Meanwhile, a reward had been orfered. By means of the letter enclosing the advertisement a fellow tradesman traced him and caused him to be arrested. Place on trial, he was convicted largely because he had been so foolish as to run away, and exe- - cuted.

Perhaps the most singular happening of its kind took place when Charles Peace was arrested at BlacKheath. At first the police did not know that there was a price ij£ £IOO on the head of their captive, and did not , in fact, even suspect his identity till* they had made many inquiries. Afterwards, Susan Grey, with whom the master burglar had lived ror years, claimed the' blood money on the ground that she had assisted in the identification.