DARING ROBBERY AT THE CARRINGTON GROUNDS.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 298, 12 September 1888, Page 4

DARING ROBBERY AT THE CARRINGTON GROUNDS.

A determined and well-planned robbery was committed at the Carrington Athletic Grounds. Sydney, between midnight on Saturday and daylight on Sunday morning, the safe in the office being blown open, and about £600 stolen. It appears that on Saturday night a cabman drove two men to the grounds, where the final rounds of the Spring Handicap were being run off under the electric light. He stopped outside with his cab after the grounds had been closed up, and being asked by a policeman why he was remaining, replied that he was waiting to be paid. Early on Sunday morning he was again questioned by a transit officer, and gave a similar answer. Shortly before daylight an explosion was heard by several people in the neighbourhood, and a cab was also heard to drive oft". Later on it was found that the explosion was due to the use of some such material us dynamite, which had been used to force the office fire- proof safe. The office door had been prised open by forcing off the hasp, thus treeing the lock, and the burglars were then able to work in comparative security, as a high fence surrounds the whole grounds. A hole was started with a drill near the bottom part of the door of the t-afe, in which the money, consisting mainly of silver, had been deposited in a number ot small bags. After chilling through about one-third the thickness of the outside plate, the hole was abandoned, and a fresh one started near the knob of the door. This attack was successful, and a clean-cut hole, about threeeighths of an inch in diameter, was put through the plate, which is tomething less than half an inch thick. The explosive was then inserted through this hole, and from the smallness of its size it is probable that a dynamite cartridge was bi oken up and forced through piecemeal into the sawdust which is used as packing between the inner and outer plates of safe doors. A short fuse was used to fire the charge, and the fact that it was only a few inches in length gives the idea that the person who used it was well acquainted with its properties, as under other circumstances a much longer piece would have been made use of. Grease had also been brought into requisition to keep the drill from heating, so that the burglars understood both the use of tools and of explosives. The effect ot the explosion was to completely shatter the lock and entirely wreck the front of the safe. The door was blown open, the sawdust packing scattered all, over the room, and the lock mechanism smashed into small pieces and thrown out into the room, while fragments of bi asswork were driven across the chamber and buried deep in the books and woodwork ol the desks, etc. The building itself was uninjured. As a piece of bravado the burglars had taken out of a box a large pistol formerly used for starting the races, and a powder - flask, and significantly placed them side by side on the table. They lett behind in a lower drawer in the sate some small money and stamps, but ot the bags of silver, which had been stacked in the body of the safe, no trace remained. Through the transit officers the cabman who had been waiting at the grounds was quickly discovered, and, in answer, bo questions by the police, he &tated that he had driven the two men previously, but did not know who they were. The police, however, aie confident that they know one of them.