1941-07-01 — Page 9

THE CHINA MAIL, JULY 1, 1941. WATCHED FOR SEVEN YEARS

DIAMOND ALLEY'S DAY OF FAME

BLACK LION YARD, Whitechapel—“Diamond Alley"-recently had its day of fame. East-Enders contrived to walk that way to look at the closed shutters of Nathan Fishberg's jewellery shop, centre of one of the most spotlit cases in years.

Fifty-five-year-old Nathan Fishberg and his 32-year-old son Harry were sentenced at the Old Bailey to 18 months' and nine months' imprison- ment respectively for receiving stolen jewellery valued at £1,100.

The police said the shop had been a receiving centre for stolen jewellery "for a long time."

They said they had been watching Black Lion-yard for seven years. The Flahbergs alleged they had been framed, and that the jewellery had been 'plan ed" on them.

So Black Lion-yard is tempor- arily in the limelight. It has be come a calling-place for the City's curious ones.

14 YEARS FOR BLACKMAIL

Described by Mr. Jus- tice Oliver as one of the wickedest women in

City men strolled ver from Bishopsgate to look at the shop world,

0000.

GASSED ANIMALS

A DANGER

1

Gassed animals, particularly if they have mustard gas on their coats, may be- come a public danger, as they are likely to panic during a raid and contaminate peo- ple.

This is the view of Our Dumb Friends' League, which has produced о leaflet instructing animal owners on the care of pets in case of gas attack.

the Mrs. Phoebe oo000000

and the policeman on beat in the Rebecca Ainsworth, aged narrow yard. In the meantime, the ordinary life of Whitechapel,

48, Little Shambles, York, "BETTER

beards and padded shoulders, rags was charged at Leeds

and praying shawls, flowed over and round it.

Assizes recently with de- 'OLE' " Black Lion-yard is no ordinary manding money with yard. I asked one bystander how

menaces. Charged with much he guessed as the value of Black Lion-yard's jewels. He her was Robert William was modest and guessed £50,000, Cooper, 48, of the same

address.

but the next one I asked guessed

£250,000.

It is, as its name implies, simply a yard. It leads from White- chapel and then up three steps to Old Montague Street, which is one of the East End's streets of two-storey houses, like a thousand others.

Black Lion-yard is 100 yards long and very narrow. It has about 30 shops. Nearly every one of these is a jeweller's. I counted ten in a row.

-or

The prosecution alleged that, while fortune telling by means of a crystal, Ainsworth extract. ed information from "Miss X." a Keighley spinster aged 65, concerning herself and mar- ried man,, "Mr. Y." and that under threat of exposure "Miss X" parted with her life savings, amounting to over £1.000.

a

JUMP OVER

DURING THE GREEK WAS A AIR FORCE PILOT, ROYAL WHO MADE A PARACHUTE THE ALBANIAN MOUNTAINS, LANDED IN A SHELL CRATER SOMEWHERE GREEK AND BETWEEN THE ITALIAN LINES.

An artillery barrage was creep- ing over the shattered No Man's Land, and the officer put on an Italian in hat which he found

lying on the ground. He removed the hat hurriedly when a machine- gun opened fire on him.

It is the East End's Bond Street

It was also alleged that menac- perhaps Its Burlington Arcade. It has international con- ing letters received by "Miss Xole" and, scrambling from one included several written by

nections. Some of the inhabitants

Indu, M.D."

have premises, in Hatton-garden. Cooper in the guise of "Professor

Nearly all are wholesale manufacturing jewellers as well

and

as retallers. Most are diamond. "Very Good To Him"

JA

merchants. Some are smart shops that could be transplanted as they stand to Bond Street with- Cooper stated that Mrs. Ains- out feeling "out of it."

worth, who had been very good Others are more like the offices to him, asked him to write the of long-established solicitors. letters because he was the better Others again have what I would writer. He thought he was writ call more of a look of Antwerp, ing for a debt. Some were dictat- and one peers through the windowed by Mrs. Ainsworth and others at the balances on the wall as if were copied by him from draft looking backwards through 4 letters she supplied. She told him "Professor Indu" was a friend of hers. He never received ally money.

hundred years.

For Seven Years This was the yard which, Mr. St. John Hutchinson, K.C., de- clared in court, that the Flying Squad had been "watching for seven years" without finding anything.

The case was as much as any- thing a trial of the honour and the methods of the Flying Squad.

He decided to look for "a better

shell-hole to another, finally reached the safety of the Greek

lines, where his allies apologised

for the mistake.

"And anyhow," they explained, "the Italian tin helmets are no good-they are so thin, bullets go right through them."

LORD HALIFAX ON SKYSCRAPER

a

Combining the duties of statesman with the pleasures of a tourist, Viscount Halifax, British Ambassador to the United States, recently went on a trip to the top of the Empire State building's 102

The Judge said that for two years the life of Mies X, was made a hell on earth. Miss X. was passionately fond of her storeys. rospectability, and the woman had "battened upon that until he gazed down

she had dragged from Miss X. every penmy she had in the world.

In the brilliant sunshine

on the teeming island of Manhattan and saw crowded around its dock Senior officer of this famous

cargo boats which were being squad, Inspector "Tug" Wilson,

loaded with 'planes and other Both prisoners were found was under fire. The defence al guilty, and in passing sentence of military supplies for Bitain. leged that he had been paid £60 14 years' penal servitude

In the morning he called on the by the prisoners while a woman Ainsworth Mr. Justice Oliver said: Episcopal Bishop of New York, private detective employed by You must be one of the wicked-the Right Rev. William Manning, Catholic Arch- them listened in from her hiding est women in the world. You took and the Roman place on the stairs in Black Lion- and tortured poor Misa X strip-bishop.

ped her of every penny she had, and drove her nearly to death.":

yard.

on

"It is no use mincing wards," the Recorder cald during the case. The gloves are off and Sending Cooper to four years' the lesues are stark. If that lo penal servitude he said: "You the state of Scotland Yard, then have taken part in this dreadful one of the bulwarke of scolety | crime—a minor part, but still Is a fallacy,

wicked part."

Confidence

The Jury's verdict was, in ef- Yank" was going to deposit stolen fect, one of confidence in Inspec- goods at Black Lion-yard that tor Wilson and the Flying Squad. Inspector Wilson began investi-

It was with the idea of hand-gations.

ling from a distance, crime pro-

blems. too intricate for local de- The informer, who appeared in tectives that, the Flying Squad court, was accused of being was originally formed.

copper's hark.

Its name has no necessarv connection with its wireless- equipped motor cars, any more than in military terminology a Aying column" has anything to do with aeroplanes.

“The Yank””

It was on Information that a well-known: thief called

a

BARONET SELLS NEW YORK LAND

Government restrictions on transferring funds outside Britain have forced Sir John MacTaggart, the well-known Scottish and Lon- don builder and property owner, to acquiesce in the sale of a valuable plece of land at the cor ner of Fifth-Avenue, and 69th- Street, New York,

Sir John purchased the land "Thla la the first, offence of five years ago and hoped to build- which you have been convict- a "block of flats on it. He had ed, the Recorder sald to spent on it about £175,000 Nathan Flahberg.

mora, serious, for Sut for that. Because he was unable to meet

the

consequences would be his obligations, owing to inability um satisfied to get funds from Britain, the that you hava boon tunning Excelsior Savings Bank was TO- this businosa on the lino in luctantly forced to forecloso on dloated, and all the time you, its interest in the property, which knew the rlak you were takings! was auctioned for £03,000,

"I can tell

WHITE

Page

HORSE blindfold

... it's equal to a fine liqueur.”

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