The robbery of silver ingots in Ossulton Street on Wednes-
day is spoken of as extraordinary; but the wonder is that crimes of the kind do not occur more frequently. Every day quantities of treasure in gold, silver, banknotes, or precious articles are conveyed through the streets of London in such safety that nobody takes even ordinary precautions. The diamond-dealers of Hatton Garden are always walking about with thousands of pounds in their pocket-books. Other thousands are sent every afternoon to the Bank in clerks' satchels. The great jewellers send out their valuables, some- times, as in the case of "Streeter v. Tasker," to extraordinary amounts, under no guardianship save that of a clerk ; while gold and silver in bars must be crossing the City on almost every day of the week. Messrs. Vivian and Co., for instance, of Swansea, metal-smelters we presume, sent thirty ingots of silver in five cases, worth 24,800, to their correspondents in London, in a Midland Railway van, in charge of a man and a boy. Man and boy left the cases in the street for twenty minutes while they went to breakfast in a coffee-house. Daring that time thieves, who knew about the ingots, and must, therefore, know something either of Messrs. Vivian's business or that of the Midland Railway, drove away the van, emptied the boxes, and disappeared. As a man could scarcely lift an ingot, they must have had confederates and a hiding-place quite near ; but the robbery required no quality beyond a power of obtaining information and a cer- tain audacity. The police have a clue, and on Friday it was reported that four of the ingots had been discover in a receiver's house.
Previous page
