Posed as a Colonel

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1046, 9 August 1930, Page 18

Posed as a Colonel

Adventuress Who Haunts the Capitals of Europe

UR SUED all over the Continent, “James Joy,” a notorious trickster, supposed to be an Australian, proves, according to advices received

from Paris, to be a woman who has masqueraded as her dead husband for 15 years. The real name of this woman trickster is said to be Grace Hollins, and iter birthplace is believed to be Sydney. While her husband was completing his military training, Mrs. Joy lived in London, and there acquired her liking for a life of adventure. Later, she went to Paris, where she has lived ever since. Joy was reported missing in Gallipoli, and was, after the usual lapse of time, presumed dead. Certain identity papers that had been returned to the British authorities by the Turks with the explanation that they had been found by a burial party, were taken as additional proof of his fate and banded to the woman. Female Don Juan

When the Armistice came, she was able to extend her operations and, after bringing off many coups at the expense of wealthy Americans who had rushed to the battlefields, she made for Belgium, then into Germany and through country after country until she reached Constantinople, where she gave it out that she was a colonel who had been sent on a mission by the Commonwealth Government to organise the burial of the Anzac dead on Gallipoli. Now and then she turned her attention to cultivating her own sex, and appears to have achieved some success as a Don Juan, because she exploited a large number of wealthy

American women who never suspected they were being wooed by a woman. When threatened with exposure over one particular fraud, running into thousands, she hurried to Italy, where she squandered the greater part of the money, and had to resort to new tricks to raise the wind. Again she'found easy prey in the American tourists; and there are police records of her appearance in different parts of Italy with “fiancSes”

whom she deserted after relieving them ot valuables and cash. She next turned up in Spain, and there gave it out that she was interested in tracing British deserters from France. She was received officially, and again pursued her amours and predatory operations.