Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1904-12-31

brought up in Cleveland-that much she ad-
mitted. l remember her as a handsome and
curiously gifted woman away back in the
seventies. That was after she had delib
erately embarked, with her eyes wide open,
upon a criminal career.
ELLA began III Cleveland as a shopIifter.
She didn't go in for the trinket stuff, but
made expensive laces her graft. Being new
and lacking experience, they nailed her in
Cleveland but she slipped out by framing
UP a swell sympathy dodge.
Queen Ella could manipulate the per-
secuted and martyred female stunt in a way
that would put lump in the throat of a
mummified mound builder, and Duse, the
emotional italian actress, never saw the
day or night that she could turn on the
spigot and exude so many hot, crystalline
tears as Ella Mayhem could when Ella got
1t figured out that it was going to be her
main clutch to operate the lachrymose
play. l once saw her make VIGOROUSLY
hard and yndictye Brooklyn Judge bio "
springing her little scientific weep play on
him at the psychological moment, and this,
too, when she had been nailed with the
goods all over her. If. instead of becom-
ing a class A crook, Ella had gone upon
the stage. she would have picked up the
sobby parts and run away with them.
New York Next.
when Ella clambered out of her first lit
tie mess in Cleveland she made up her
mind that the Lake Erie town wasn't roomy
enough for her, and so she made for the
main burg over the way from Hoboken and
Jersey City. She was magnificent look
er, with all kinds of the society manner,
and when she started in to shred the New
York shops the game came her way with
a rattle.
''She was the very first woman to put
through the kleptomaniac frameup in this
country. She had about looted the lace de-
partments of a lot of New York stores, in
Inn wal hoI OF
arts establishment, where laces were a
speciality, before she was nabbed through
an accident, bolt of expensive lace Slip
ping to the floor from one of her cavern
pockets.
ELLA fixed up a beautiful faint in the
office to which she was summoned by the
manager of the store. and reduced the
members of the firm to tender sympathy
by a recital of how the habit of involun-
tarily taking things had grown upon her
The upshot was that they asked her. for
her own sake and for the sake of the
family, TO be good-and let her go. Ella
then decided that lifting from the counters
involved too much personally-conducted
risk. and that there really wasn't enough
in it, anyhow, for woman of her adrOit-
ness.
do around New York, off and on, for a
good many years. kept the headquarters
staff on The move.
A Clever Trick.
For another thing, she was the first
crock. man or woman, to pull off the slid
ing bureau drawer game in the annexing
OF diamonds. She rented couple of COM
municating rooms in big New York ho-
tel, after registering there under the name
of a wealthy western woman, whose hus-
band was highly rated in the commercial
directories. Then she sent for one of the
most noted gem dealers IN New York to
fetch a collection of diamond brooches,
rings. earrings, and so on to her apart
ments, as she was DESTROYS of selecting
some presents for sister about to be mar
red in the west.
THE diamond man sent an agent with a
valise full of jewelry to the hotel. Queen
Ella putting on her fine, naughty society
room of her two-room suite. She spent
about an hour in carefully selecting the
gems that she wanted, putting them aside
in a morocco case that she produced for
the purpose. After picking out about
5000 worth of stones she announced that
she had enough, and she placed the moroc-
co case in the top drawer of a bureau that
stood by the door leading into the bed
room. She told the happy diamond man
that she would go into the other room and
draw a check for the amount of her in
debtedness for the jewels.
After she went the diamond man sat
and twiddled his thumbs, figuring joyously
on the amount of his commission for the
big sale. But after he had waited and
twddled his thumbs for about half an hour
he began to grow nervous, and so. just to
satisfy himself, he tiptoed over to the
bureau to have peek at the morocco
case.
1T wasn't there. Of course. Ella had
walked out with it long before. She had
simply passed out of the room in which
she had examined the jewelry, into the
hail. and then entered the other room. A
panel had been cut out of the door leading
into the sitting room. and. similarly, a
panel had been cut out of the blackboard
OF the top drawer OF the bureau. So that
II had been something easy for Queen
Ella just to reach through the cut-out
door panel and annex The morocco case
from the bureau drawer, put on her hat