THE OREGON SUNDAY: JOURNAL, PORTLAND, SUNDAY .MORNING, NOVEMBER 7, 1920. s a How Professional Thieves All Over tKe ! :W' 46 3 '1 -1 . .-'r-.-T T'1 4,. : .:- 1 Vr.-!- . .krrf?5Ar. c t I J - s L . x : x 1 1 mm"' h " " . i H - s v. t v (, i , ' - - s - x " s ' c . - r . , .. 'i ,,... ; Jlf rs. Benjtmia Guinness At a Fashionable NevfYork'Fancy Dress Function in the Costume of the Queen of Nineveh, Wearing Two Million Dollars Worth of Jewels, Which Included Her Own Collection of Gems and Other Jewelry Borrowed from Fashionable Acquaintances, Among: Which Is Seen , the Uootoo Jeweled Crown Loaned, Her. for tha Occasion by Her Friend, MrsJjohn Astox. a V 7 .?Z'f&krS - W Sv-- J .''4 3? ' Jf"S jar.-, .n . y, i i 1 Country Are Affairs and Their Victims Until the Opportunity Arrives HASHIONS and customs in crime change, as in eTerjtnlng else, in ao l cordance with changing conditions and circumstances, j .. ' The old-fashioned hank burglar has gone out 'of business because the vaults of the modern big banks are too skilfully guarded. The old-time big jewelry store robberies have practically ceased because the valu ables are too carefully protected to afford opportunity for wholesale thefts. ' The epidemic of bond robberies in the financial sections which etartled the coun try "last Winter have been pretty well ended because brokers, banks, and the bonding insurance companies have learned a lesson and are safeguarding securities more carefully. At the present moment American thieves have centred their attention on the Jewels of wealthy and fashionable American women, because this is found to be the easiest field of operations. For the last six months there has been a more or less important Jewelry robbery almost every . night In some fashionable section of the country, and very few of the burglars ) have been caught. Everybody remembers the Caruso robbery of nearly half a mill Ion' dollars' worth of Jewels early last 'June. This case was given wide publicity In the newspapers, but of the multitude of other Jewel robberies here and there throughout tho country very few details . reached the ears of the newspapers. Why have professional thieves turned their attention Industriously to women's Jewels T The reasons are not hard to seek. In! the first place the Jewelry possessions of, wealthy American women run into countless millions. Where is there a multi millionaire American's .wife who has not from a hundred thousand dollars' worth to a million dollars' worth or more of Jewels? It has been estimated that within the walls of one public building, the Metropolitan Opera House, on many an occasion there are jewels to the value of ten millions in the hair, the ears, around the throats, on the fingers and on the clothes of the women present i I Indeed, at some social functions or fancy dress occasions, one Individual woman of social prominence sometimes wears not only all her own wealth of Jewels but loads down her headdress and costume with many added ! jewels, borrowed for the occasion from wealthy friends. The picture printed elsewhere on this pace of Mrs. Benjamin Guinness shows the noted banker's wife costumed as Semircmis, Queen of Nineveh. She wore with this cos- tome a splendid Jeweled crown lent by her friend Mrs.' John Astor, worth $100,000. and other Jewels r belonging to other friends, the iwhole collection being worth not less than $2,000,000. ' I If a wealthy man owns securities run ning into the hundreds of thousands he does not keep them In his house or on his person or In his office. They are securely locked up in the vaults of a bank' or safe deposit company. But If his wife owns a two hundred thousand dollar necklace of matched pearls and another half million dollars' worth of miscellaneous rings, brooches and jewels, they cannot be given the security of a safe deposit vault if the owner is to wear them and get any satis faction out of them. Here lies the secret of the repeated and successful raids unon the private jewel collections of fashionable and Wealthy women. It is easy tor a thief to make a list of millionaires' wives who own valuable Jewelry. The next step is to watch the movements of the owner of the gems. Sooner or later the opportunity will come for the thief to find the jewels removed from their customary hiding place or place of partial security. ! ! If the cautious husband of the owner of the Jewels has a fairly secure receptacle in his town residence, then the thief may have to patiently watch him until the fam ily moves to the country, and the robbery is pulled off in the Summer home, as the Caruso burglary was. I But If both the town house and the coun try house are provided with quite secure receptacles for the jewels, then the thief may find his opportunity while the jewels are in transit on! a train. Mrs. Arthur Whitney was robbed of thirty thousand dollars' worth of trinkets on an east-bound . Pennsylvania train. : ! If neither the town house nor the coun try house nor the railroad train glVes op portunity, perhaps the Intended victim can . be reached while stopping at soma hotel. Thus Elsie Janls, the actreBS, lost fifty eight thousand dollars' worth of Jewels at the Hotel Seelbach, in LouisviLe, Ken tucky, last April ! t And 30 the ocean steamer, the automo - bile and other times and places give the opportunity to the thief who has marked his victim, patiently watehed her perhaps for weeks and finds his chance unexpected ly and seizes the opportunity, i Sophia Lyons, the most expert American Ijewel thief known to the police, in a burst . of confidence told how she and her con- AO) 1920, Intenattonal Veatuie Serrioa. las. Watching Social Following , federates had sometimes spent an entire year watching a woman before the oppor tunity offered. One enormous (haul of jewelry was made from an American "woman's bedroom in a hotel in Monte 'Carlo after; they had watched her. New York residence," her country house at New port and followed her on social visits to Chicago and Washington, had crossed the ocean with her on the steamship, had taken rooms in the same hotel in London andin Paris and in Nice and finally caught her ; off her guard one night after her re turn from the Monte Carlo Casino to her hotel apartments. It was a long invest ment, Sophia Lyons explained, of time, . patience and money, but it paid handsome ly when the thieves at last got into their hands a million dollars'' worth of jewels. How the watchful robbers seize time and s opportunity has been 'vividly illustrated by . several recent robberies' where the thieves have awaited the occasion of a social func tion when the women "had the Jewels on their necks, bosoms and fingers. Here the coveted valuables were in the open, away from their! customary places of hiding or security. Could the thieves follow those Jewels and get hold of them before the owners took the time or precaution to lock them away or hide them away? Sometime during the night of October 13 tnoreihan a hundred thousand dollars' worth of gems were taken from the bed rooms of the members of the Sleepy Hol low Country Club at Scarborough-on-the-Hudson, near New York. The ladles had attended an exclusive dance on the floor below. The festivities were carried over so far Into the early morning that many of the guests decided to remain at the club over night instead of returning to their homes. Here was the opportunity. Whatever had been the custom of the owners of the Jew els, whatever had been the hiding place ofi security in the homes of the owners, here came the j moment when Bomewhere in those bedrooms, probably within the reach . of a thief's fingers, the jewels at last were lying unprotected. ; , Even bolder and more , cruelly crude were the operations of two Chicago jewel thieves who watched the departing guests from a whist party at a residence on South ' Troy street in the early morning hours of that very same day when the Sleepy Hol low Club Jewels were being stolen near -New York.: As six women guests at the whist party were leaving in an automobile two rob bers, pistols In handr Jumped on the running-boards. One held his revolver at the chauffeur's head while It was still within sight of the bright lights of the South Troy street residence and ordered the driver to go to the entrance of a nearby park. Here the thieves stripped the ladies of their Jewels and escaped through the shrubbery. At the home of Mrs. George McFadden ' Crest Britain Bights Reserved ' 3 Jr., near Phila- .mm- , ; . ' . - , .Jelphia, t h 1 e v es in the night made their way to a box containing jewelry to the value of $250,000. This " included a string of j pearls worth $150,000 and was one of the finest owned in the United States, of this found now. No trace has been and by probably, the rope, consist ing of 165 pearls, has been taken apart and -each - : ' pearl put in, another Betting. This robbery was d!scoveredaffer;a reception at the house, and while the McFaddens felt confident of the integrity of all their guests and servants, the de tectives inclined to the belief that some traitor guest or servant was the theif. At the home of Mrs., William Sackett Duell, of Meadowbrook, Pa., a function of note was held a couple of weeks ago. Soon after the last guest had departed Mrs. Duell retired x to her room and to her amazement and dismay saw that her jewel 'box had been ransacked and rare famHy Jewels worth over $25,000 abstracted. Her distress was the more acute because she was forced to the realization that she had actually been graciously entertaining the thief that evening, that, perhaps, she had even been reckoning the thief on her list of cherished friends. . Toward early Summer $75,000 worth of jewels were stolen from the home of Mrs. Hamilton Fish, the well-known social leader, at No. 810 Fifth avenue. New York City. This robbery has always been shrouded in mystery, as neither the family nor the police would admit anything. . But the robbery was reported. Just the same, and a servant suspected. And so it haa gone. These are but some of the more important Jewel robberies that have had police, detectives and the surety companies by the ears for the past ear, not In New York alone, but "all over the country. There seems little to suggest in safe guarding household jewels. Samuel B. Brewster, who has charge of the burglary -department of the American Surety Com pany, says that employes and their ref erences should be more carefully exam ined. Nine out of ten letters of recom mendation are forgeries.. Women should-be less ostentations of r-v Ml .... - '' ' Some of tK Jewel of the Famous) and Valuable Collection pf Mrs. William B. Leeds. Photo by . Amie Dupont Airs. John R. J Drexel Wearing Some of Her J Famous Jewels,' The Useless Birrglar Alarm Jewel Case in Which the Caruso Jewels Were Kept, but Which Afforded No Security Because the Thief Was Able to Pick Up the Whole Thin Under His Arm and Carry It Oflv their jewelry In public. They should be very careful about showing it where there are strangers. They should also be more careful about their Jewelry at home. They, misplace eome of It and think it has been stolen. Later it is found. That encourages the servants to abstract some of 11 at a later date, hoping that the mistress will think - uhs ume,u is mislaid. But even a strict obedience to these suggestions would not seem to be a very efficient safeguard for household jewels. '4 S , d. V " y - r A .y-; . V , - - 7-.r 4