Dressed Among Men

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 606, 7 March 1929, Page 9

Dressed Among Men

WOMAN’S AMAZING VENTURE

Strange Masquerade Story

(Vnited P.A.—By Telegraph — Copyright} (Australian and N.Z. Press Association) (Vnited Service)

Received n a.m. LONDON. Wednesday. FtiL astonishing fact that “Captain Barker” went through the ordeal of a trial at the Old Bailey for being in unauthorised possession of an automatic pistol, and was acquitted without suspicion of her sex. has aroused several women to say now that they were suspicions and tried to trap her.

The amazing career of the woman who posed for years as an army officer under the name of Captain Leslie Ivor Victor Barker, who was one of the leaders of the National fiascisti in London, and who ran a west End restaurant, and was then ; employed as a reception clerk in a ■ big West End hotel, was revealed by ! her arrest for contempt in failing to ' appear at a bankruptcy examination, j Th e “captain” was taken to Brixton Gaol, a prison for men, where her secret was revealed. The women, who now say they were suspicious, assert that the “captain” always had a plausible explanation, the fact that she said she had a wife and a little boy contributing to her immunity from suspicion. It is believed that she was married | to a soldier who died after the war, leaving her with a child unprovided for. A later message says Barker is now | revealed to be Mrs. Valerie Smith.

She was married to an Australian in the war time, and is the mother of a nine-year-old boy and a girl of eight. She served as a V.A.D. in France and also as a lorry driver. She started her masquerade six years ago, when she was poultry farming in Sussex. While she was at the West End Hotel, where she was arrested, she shared the communal dressing room, drank beer, and changed her clothing among the men. When her locker was opened it contained dress clothes, an eyebrow pencil and a powder puff, whicji had obviously been used, also safety .pins. There was a safety razor, but no evidence that it had been used. It appears that she carried on tlkp masquerade in many towns in Eng-, land, particularly Andover, where she ] played cricket and tennis, and was | often seen in the streets in flannels, j with a shirt open at the neck. She ! went shopping in plus fours.