HOTEL THIEVES.

Taranaki Daily News, 31 March 1921, Page 5

HOTEL THIEVES.

OPERATING IN'THE NORTH ISLAND. For the past few weeks an epidemic of hotel robberies has run its course from Auckland to Wellington, and it appears to be still raging. Whether the robberies which have taken place are the, work of a gang of thieves is a matter for speculation, but the indications of systematic thefts apparently point to unison in methods of working, and lead to the surmise that fleecing of the travelling public is being carried out on a large scale. The police have l>een making careful investigations iu all places where the robberies have occurred, but the system on which the thieves work appears to have them baffled. On Monday night, or early on Tuesday morning, further robberies took place both in Feilding and in Palmerston North, where the guests of two hotels suffered.

Visitors to one hotel woke up about breakfast time to the fact that they were minus various sums of money ranging from £1 to £2(l, of which they had been relieved either during the night or while they were away from their rooms in the morning. In this hotel four rooms were entered and over £3O stolen. Investigations disclosed t'he fact that though some of the boaiders left valuables such as watches and jewellery, and also money in silver in their pockets, notes were the only currency favored by the thief or thieves. This discrimination is accounted for when it is remembered that silver makes a jingling sound calculated to lead to the discovery of the culprit, and the disposal of jewellery is also a proceeding fraught with risk of detection. Some of the victims were visiting bowlers. At another hotel, a bowler lost a number of notes which were taken from him coat pocket while he was absent at the bathroom a few yards from his room. A watch chain, to which was attached a sovereign case containing a number of sovereigns and half sovereigns wa» untoiwih&d hx the thief.