Woman’s Beauty Misused in Career of Crime

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 305, 16 March 1928, Page 12

Woman’s Beauty Misused in Career of Crime

Female ‘Jekyll &Hyde ’ Makes Plea for Mercy DAUGHTER OF GOOD FAMILY With tears coursing down her painted cheeks, Esme Beaumont Ellison, a faultlessly-dressed, attractive, and obviously well-educated woman, made an eliquent but vain appeal for mercy from the dock at Cardiff Quarter Sessions. Her pathetic plea was disregarded, however, for it was proved that she had misused her beauty and undoubted talents in a long career of crime, and she was sentenced to five years’ penal servitude. The career of “The Woman in Black,” as she has been called, would provide good material for a long and sordid novel by a modern Zola, says the “Sunday News.” Esme Ellison's latest offences included the theft of two diamond rings. In each case she had chosen a ring for her “birthday,” using the names of men who were of substantial means in Cardiff, claiming that each was her husband, and chatting of their deep and absorbing affection. She said to one of the defrauded jewellers: “Ah, my husband is an ideal partner. He begrudges me nothing. He lives for me and for me alone. . . . That is how a husband ought to behave.” Both the jewellers were fascinated by the culture and the deportment of the woman. Indeed, one of the assistants who trusted her with a ring, which she instantly pledged, told the Recorder that she was “a perfect lady.” This “perfect lady,” even at that moment, was a convict on licence, and, consequently, under the supervision of the police. There were 11 other charges against her. She had attracted the amorous attention of a prominent and wealthy townsman of Swansea, who had promised her marriage. She told the detective who arrested her that she was to have been married the next day, and possibly she would have become the wife of some trusting and unhappy man, but for the restraining hand of the law. In her speech to the Cardiff Recorder —delivered with dramatic fervour and touching pathos—Esme Ellison told something of her career. “It is true that I am a convicted criminal,” she said. “It is true that I have not long been out of that hell which they call prison. ... It is a hell . . . worse far than any hell that Dante wrote of or the prophets conceived.” She paused for an instant-, and then went on: “I am the daughter of a clergyman. . . I was happily married once, and I was broken, as so many are, by the tongue of slander, jealousy and malice. . . /* The prisoner had learned elocution from a master of the art. “I tried to find work,” she went on, “but who would employ me? There are so many with characters untarnished who find it impossible to obtain employment that a ticket-of-leave woman has no chance.” Ran Away From Home Again she stopped and tears fell almost in a torrent from her tired grey eyes. “I was without home, without credit, without character, without work. ... I went down and down. I had lost whatever self-reliance I ever had in prison. You do lose it there. I was destitute and without friends. There were officers of Scotland Yard who were kind to me. If it had not been for them . . Here she completely broke down. Esme Beaumont is still less than 40 years of age. She was born in Newport, Monmouthshire, and though not, as she had claimed, the daughter of a minister, she belonged to a family of good record and untainted honour. She was sent to a boarding school, where she showed great promise, and carried away a good many prizes. At home she was wayward and fond of pleasure. She ran away from the protection of her parents and plunged into the gaiety of London. Exactly what happened is known only to herself, but she did manage to keep out of the hands of the police, and eventually found her way back home. She began to attend church, and at length attracted the attention of a young man of good character and position, and they were married. She was false to her marriage vows and fled from the husband who loved her. Divorce followed; and after that—for her—the quagmire of crime. She started her criminal career by obtaining goods by false pretences, and went to prison for three terms of six months each. This was at Bath, where she posed as a woman of title and the heiress to a large fortune. When she left prison friends were ready to help her; but she flouted their aid and journeyed from Bristol to Birmingham. In the capital of the Midlands she carried on in style. For a while she stayed at a prominent hotel in New Street, but failed to pay her bill the week after a “protector” had left her. She then went the round of the jewellers’ shops, receiving goods on credit which she instantly pawned. It was soon after this that her fine figure, natural grace and some power of song led to her taking a theatrical engagement in London. She appeared for a fortnight at the Gaiety, and was then discharged. She was still able to command credit, however, and committed frauds on jewellers which led to her conviction at the Central Criminal Court. No sooner was she free from gaol than she was back once, more to her life of crime. From the London Sessions, subsequently, she was released on the condition that she entered a mental home. The mental home was the last thing Esme wanted. Her movements were watched, and her “kink” for mischief was stopped. One night she escaped through a window, and the next evening’s newspapers were alive with stories of the “female lunatic at large.” She remained in hiding long enough to make the authority under which she was detained void. Then she openly declared herself. She wrote to one friend an outspoken criticism of the mental home, which she spoke of as “A place of constant watching, unceasing moaning and dull despair.” In the last sentence of her letter she stated: “It may well be said, ‘Abandon hope all ye who enter here.’ I should have died had I remained. It was worse than prison.” Once again friends came to her rescue —and after more convictions at Newcastle-on-Tyne, Burnley and Westminster—so did the Y.W.C.A., the Church and the Salvation Army, but she always got out of hand. She had above all some strange fascination over men which induced them to supply her with money and allow her credit. At last she went to Exeter, where she posed as a- woman of title. She had managed to dress well, and put up at a fashionable hotel, and soon became a lady bountiful—interested in all charitable works. Such was the impression she produced in this role that she induced two tradesmen to send her diamond necklaces, worth £ 2,000, with which she decamped. She was run to earth, however, and was sent to penal Hyde. I have helped her, and so have servitude for three years at Bourneothers, because we believed that she is mouth. This was the last sentence until the

one just passed. After she was free on licence she w*andered about, and managed to obtain by false pretences jewels from shops in Ilfracombe, Barnstaple, Cheltenham, Cardiff and Swansea. There were many warrants out for her arrest, but all these were taken into account by the Cardiff Recorder. A Scotland Yard officer, of whom she spoke so well when she was in the dock, said to me: “What can be done with a woman who is so hopeless! I am not surprised at her success as a swindler—she is so suave, charming, clever and altogether irresistible. I should call her a female Jekyll and Hyde.”