WOMAN PICKPOCKET

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 September 1938, Page 7

WOMAN PICKPOCKET

MEMBER OF INTERNATIONAL GANG. TERM IN FRENCH PRISON. Described by the police as a member of a gang of international pickpockets, which included her own mother and father, 39-years-old Lily Jones, a fash-ionably-dressed brunette, was sentenced at Marlylebone, London, to one month’s hard labour. “It might have been six,” said Mr Ivan Snell, the Magistrate. She was said to have given an address to the police which turned out to be one of the museums at South Kensington. The charge against her was loitering in Oxford Street, London West, with intent to steal from women’s handbags, and Detective-Sergeant Holland, of the Flying Squad, said he had trailed her as a result of a wireless message. She was with another fash-ionably-dressed woman and was seen to place her hand on the handbags of three women. In one instance she opened a woman’s handbag and put her hand inside. Her companion disappeared. She had been sentenced at Marlborough Street to two terms of three months for stealing purses and to three months’ hard labour as a suspected person; and in France to four months for picking pockets. “She still refuses any information about herself,” added Sergeant Holland, “but we know that she was born in Australia, is a widow and has two children, aged 16 and 15, who are being cared for by her sister in Australia. “It is also known that she is a member of an international gang, who have been travelling to and from the Continent and between South Africa and Australia. She has also been seen on a number of occasions in the big Lon-

don stores, but has outwitted the private detectives there.” Mr Snell mentioned that he had received a letter stating that for a number of years she had been leading a very useful life in the country, helping to run a poultry farm, and had not been in trouble for years until she came to London for a holiday.