Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1913-06-01
LONDON boobies
ARE ALSO THIEVES
Rob Vacant Houses, Owners of
Which Have Requested Pro-
lection of Police.
PERPETUAL MOTION is
THE GOAL OF INVENTORS
Some Have Spent Fortunes and
Others Driven Mad Pursuing
Will O the Wisp.
LONDON, Nav - 1879.

LONDON, May ~. 1919.
\ newsboy saw a man scale stone
wall the other day. From this trivial cir
cumstance have resulted disclosures of an
alliance between certain uniformed men,
bers of the London police force and
thieves and highwaymen under which the
police have not only aided the thieves.
but have actually turned thieves them
selves in their hours off duty.
Almost every London householder has
been in the habit of calling up the police
department on the eve of his vacation to
ask 1t to guard his unoccupied home.
Consequently. the department has an
enormous list of unoccupied houses. The
numbers of these houses are given the
members of the force with instructions to
watch for burglars.
Recently there has been an epidemic of
burglaries in the outlying residential sec
ton of the city. Practically all the loot
ed houses were homes of persons away
on vacation who had notified the depart
ment of their plans. Very few of the
burglars have been caught. in fact. the
patrolmen on the beat where the burgla-
ries occurred invariably reported that
they had seen no suspected characters in
the neighborhood. To make the problem
still more difficult, the burglaries We're
seldom discovered until weeks afterward
Spied by Newsboy.
\ newsboy, delivering his papers in the
thief-ridden section of the suburbs saw
! a man climb over the wall of a large
garden surrounding a mansion that sits
back well from the roadway. He had
read of the burglaries; his suspicious
were aroused and he summoned the near
est policeman. having telephoned already
to the precinct station. Within a few
minutes Gordon of hobbies and detect
| ives closed about the mansion.
Three burglars were captured redhand-
ed; one escaped by climbing the wall and
running. OF the trio captured two were
found to be policemen: one of them, In
deed, the man who did police duty eight
hours day on the beat where the man.
sion was located. The newsboy glimpsed
the escaping burglar and asserted that
he too. was a policeman. The third
prisoner was notorious thief
Since the arrest of the burglar-poIice-
men an Investigation has revealed that
the case is by no means exceptional and
that the immunity from arrest enjoyed
BY many London burglars is due to a
widespread alliance with the police. Re-
luctantly, the Londoner is abandoning the
old custom of notifying the police when
he expects to take a vacation Instead
he is adopting the American habit of
joining with his neighbors in employing
the Waterman are to watch the police
II has not yet been necessary to en-
ploy some one to watch the Waterman
/ When that time comes. it is not unlikely
that the 1Iondoner will dispense with his
vacation altogether.
Seek Perpetual Motion.
All Great Britain, apparently. is trv
ing TO invent a perpetual motion machine
Rr{f
ing engine The past year has ripened a
crop of one week. The wires and
bones of models may be found bleaching
in hundreds on the shelves of the patent
office. 1t goes without saying that not
one shows the slightest inclination to
move itself.
Varied and often pathetic are the his
tories of the inventors. Not few of
them have spent the years of their
prime in the chase of this Enattainable
will o the wisp; others have dropped
thousands of pounds In the quest still
others have trailed the quarry into the in
sane asylums. II all the wasted energy
spent In seeking the solution of this
problem had been converted into the
beaten channels of endeavor, the patent
| office officials believe there would be
few problems of mechanics left today
unsolved.
| IN way TO Brazil.
| Prof. E. c. Green Of the United States
Department Of Agriculture is in London
preparing for three-year stay i'm the in
terror of Brazil, where he hopes to teach
| the natives how to raise cotton. Prof.
| Green has been loaned to the Bra
lillian government by Washington and in
/ his moments of leisure from teaching
| cotton growing he will collect various bo-
tanical and geological specimens for the
American government
He believes that Brazil has the posi-
bility OF becoming the greatest cotton
| growing country In the world, unless un-
known ingredients in the soil make its
cultivation on a large scale impracti-
| cable. This is what Prof Green will try
| to discover, for he is convinced that eli
| matically there is no reason why Bra
| zil should not raise cotton; also he be-
| lieves the best quality can be grown
| there as soon as the growers understand
| the latest methods of cultivating it.
At the present time the country is pro-
ducing 10000 bales yearly, not enough
to keep the mills of Rio de Janeiro sup
piled.