£40,000 JEWEL THEFT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 August 1942, Page 4

£40,000 JEWEL THEFT

COUNTESS BEATTY ROBBED. EVIDENCE OF EXPERT’S WORK. LONDON, June 20. Jewellery, the pre-war vplue of which was estimated at about £40,000, was stolen from the private suite of Countess Beatty at the Dorchester Hotel. The robbery was evidently carried out by an expert thief. The suite was unoccupied for only 10 minutes. A maidservant went to idother part of the'hotel on an errand fbr Lady Beatty. When she returned she found the dressing table in disorder. Jewellery, which had been hidden underneath the dressing table, was missing. . A large pearl and other jewellery valued at about £9OOO was left behind. The thief got away with diamond necklaces, sets of diamond earrings, a number of black peails, pearl necklaces, gold-backed hairbrushes, several golden shoe-horns, and a number of family heirlooms. Superintendent Cherrill, head of Scotland Yard’s finger-print department, and Detective-Inspector Law, chief Scotland Yard photographer, spent some hours in the suite seal ching for clues. Before her marriage to Earl Beatty in 1937, the year after he succeeded io the earldom, Lady Beatty, who is 37, was Mrs Dorothy Powers Sands, younger daughter of Mr T. T. F. Powers, of Virginia, United States. She is the de-puty-chairman of the “Bundles for Britain” Society in London. Earl Beatty is on active service.