The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1889-06-28
HYPNOTIC THEFT.
An Extraordinary Case in England-The
Culprit Can Only be Punished
for Witchcraft.
Bu Coble % the Untted Press

BIZ Cable to the United Press.
LONDON, June 2s, 1SS9.-The crown
prosecutor of the city of Wolverhampton
in the county of Stafford, is in a aquandary
The police there have in custody a
young man who is undoubtedly worthy OF
severe punishment, and yet his crime Is
so entirely novel that he probably cannot
be punished at all unless the old statutes
against witchcraft are revived, in which
case he might be comfortably roasted be-
fore slow fire.
This young man, whose name is Lewis
ALERT, is a graduate of Oxford Univer-
Sity. Soon after he left college he be-
came interested in mesmerism, mind read
ing and hypnOtism, and as result or
natural gifts or close study soon became
so expert that for time he travelled
about giving exhibitions of his powers.
He acquired wonderful influence over
the will power of certain classes of people
and established such reputation that he
might have made his exhibitions very
profitable but for an unfortunate penchant
for the flowing bowl. This brought him
SO low that three months ago he turned
up in Wolverhampton in rags and with
out money or friends. Then he began to
hypnotic with vengeance.
Small shopkeeperS, usually women, be-
gan to discover that the contents of their
tills very mysteriously dwindled after a
visit from the urbane stranger. Just what
his method of procedure was none could
tell, but when they found on comparing
notes that their losses Invariably followed
the visit of the polite ALERT, they set the
police to watch him,
Then some startling discoveries were
made. His custom was to enter q shop,
make a purchase of some trifie and put
down copper in payment. Then the
hypnotizing or mesmerising process
must have been brought into requisition,
for the shopkeeper in every case took up
the copper and handed out the change
for a sovereign, which the young man
promptly pocketed. In only one case
while the police were ON his track was
there failure to befog his victim in this
way.
The detective who followed him about
was mystified for long time, being ut
terly unable to account for the hallucina-
ton which invariably seized Allert's
victims and led them to mistake copper
coin for gold sovereign, and it was only
after discovering his professional record
that he began to understand it.
Allert's last victim was yonth of nine
teen, the attendant at the box Office of a
theatre in W0lverhampton. He stepped
up to the window, boldly asked for shil-
ling ticket, handed the boy dirty scrap
of newspaper and received as change,
without the slightest hesitation on the
part of the boy, four sovereigns and
nineteen shillings. While walking off
with this he was arrested by the officer,
who had been shadowing him for two
weeks.
The boy in the box office was dumb
founded when his attention was called to
the scrap of newspaper in his cash box
and still stoutly asserted that the gentle
man had handed him five pound note.
He remembers, however, that peculiar
sensation came over him, which he de-
seribes as sort of numbness, when the
man first approached the window of the
Office.
The legal status of Allert's offence is
very difficult to determine, as it is with
out d precedent, and good lawyers say
him. The case is exciting great interest.