The Birmingham age-herald., 1913-06-01
LONDON ALSO HAS
POLICE SCANDAL
Many Boobies Allied With
Highwaymen
ROB VACANT HOUSES
Owners Notify Headquarters, Patrol
men Given List and They Pass 1t
on to the Crooks-Boy Dis
covered System

London, May 31--A newsbDy saw a man
| scale a stone wall the other Cay. From
this trivial circumstance have resulted
disclosures of an alliance between cer-
tain uniformed members of he London
police force and thieves and highway
men under which the police have not only
aideo the thieves, but have actually
turned thieves themselves 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 him 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 ar epidemic of
| burGlares in the outlying residential sec
| tion of the city. Practically ali the looted
houses were homes of persons away Oh
vacation who had notified the department
of their plans Very few of the burglars
| have been caught: in fact, the patrolmen
on the beat where the burglaries occurred
| invariably reported that thev had seen
no suspected characters in the neighbor-
| hood TO make the problem still more
| difficult the burglaries were seldom dis
covered until weeks afterwards when tho
| owners returned home.
NewsbOy Saw Thief
newsboy, delivering his papers in the
| thief-ridden section of the suburbs, saw
| a man climb over the wall of n large gar
| den surrounding a mansion that sits back
well from the roadway. He lad read of
the burglaries; his suspicious were
aroused and he summoned the nearest
| policeman, having telephoned already to
the precinct station. Within a few min
utes a Gordon of boobies and detectives
| closed about the mansion.
Three burglars were captured. red
| handed one escaped by climbing the wall
| and running. OF the trio captured two
| were found to be policemen; t.ne of them
i indeed, the man who did police duty
| eight hours a day on the beat where the
mansion was located. The newsboy
| slimpsed the escaping burglar and as
| serted that he, too, was policeman. The
| third prisoner was a notorious thief.
Since the arrest of the burslar-polce-
| man 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-
luctanty the Londoner is abandoning the
| old custom of notifying the police when
! he is adopting the American habit of
! joining with his neghbors in employing
| a watchman. The first instructions given
the watchmen are to watch the police
1t has not yet been necessary to en-
! ploy someone to watch the watchman.
! When that time comes. it is not unlikely
that the Londoner will dispense with his
| vacation altogether.
| Seek Perpetual Motion
| All Great Britain, apparently, Is trying
| to invent a perpetual motion machine
| only Great Britain calls it a self moving
| engine" The past year has ripened crop
of one week. The wires and bones of
! models may be found bleaching in hun
dreds ON the shelves of the patent office
! It 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
tae,n haf spent the years of their prime
in tae chase of this unattaiuable will o.
SO wist others have dropped thousands
r unNsas y the quest still others have
safes fhe quarry into the insane asy-
iIas,i q - the wasted energy spent in
seelsite ths3 solution of this Problem had
Qeen eaugerted into the beaten channels
/ 2f ef1gavor. the patent office officials be-
liev there would be few problems of me-
chancs left today unsoived,
Prof. f.. c. Green of the United States
department of agriculture is in London
preparing for three years stay in the
interior of Brazil, where ne hopes 10
teach the natives how to raise cotton
Professor Green has been loaned" -
the Brazilian government by Washing
ton, and in his moments of leisure from
teaching cotton growing he will collect
various botanical and geological speci.
mems for the American government
He believes that BAIL has the possi-
b:lity of becoming the greatest cotton
growing country in the world unless un-
known ingredients in The soil make its
cultivation on large scale impractical
BILE. This is what Professor Green will
try to discover for he is convinced tha
climatiealy there is no reason why Brazil
should not raise cotton also he believes
the best quality can he grown there as
soon as the growers understand the lates:
methods of cultivating it.
At the present time the country is pro-
ducing 100000 bales yearly. not enough to
keep the mills of Rio de Janeiro supplied