Ogden Standard-Examiner | 1920-04-25 | Page 10 | Notorious Woman's Case is Interesting

NOTORIOUS WOMAN'S CASE IS INTERESTING LONDOnTapjI 21. Robbery, arson, ar-son, bigamy nnds' fraud are crimes churged against Heleii-Ajleou Sinclair, tho most notorious wonYancrook the United Kingdom has known since the days of "Polly the Pickpocket" and ''Chicago May." Tracked down again, through a maze of intrigue, she has just been sentenced by n Durham judge on chnrges of theft and of being a habitual criminal to three years' penal servitude to be followed by five more of ordinary Imprisonment. The story of her life under a dozen aliafves makes a criminal record long enough for six ordinary crooks. A j summary of her doings shows she covered cov-ered nearly the whole kingdom, having hav-ing "worked" in Dublin, Edinburgh Chatham, Glasgow, Durham and Lon-! don, in which places she committed bigamy three times and was guilty or Innumerable acts of theft and lraudu-lcnt lraudu-lcnt misrepresentation. Refined and Faocinating. Of Irish birth, she owed her success suc-cess in crime to her refined and magnetic mag-netic personality, coupled with a fas-' cinatlon which caused the undoing of many admirers. One of her dodges was to represent herself as an orphan or-phan with a large fortune. This often enabled her to pry her way into thej society of prominent aud influential' J persons, whose pbver she used for hor dishonest purposes. Another stunt was. Having tusnoncsiiy ouuuiicu a nurse's certificate, to get a position in a home, which she would rob after a week or two of employment. Frequently, Fre-quently, in order to conceal the theft, she would set fire to tho house. While nursing a minister's daughter daugh-ter in Castle Douglas, Scotland, she tsole $25 and some valuable articles and then fired the room whore heri patient was. A little later a hotel1 where she wa3 staying near Edinburgh Edin-burgh was gutted by fire. Afterward she wns caught with a large sum cf mono;. stolen from the hotel, but the fire could not be proved against her. She was discharged from a position at Dublin College and tried to leave with $200 worth of college linen in( her luggage. A similar trick resulted in her being discharged from Bed-! lington Isolation hospital, where shej had worked her falsely obtained! nurse's cort'flcate to get a Job of nurs-' ing fever cases. ' Victims In High Life. ! Her frnud victims included a baro- net and a general, and she just missed j obtaining a good position In Egypt un-J der iho war office during the war. Under tho nimc of Mary Leslie she' was living in style in tho west end of London and moving in the society of well-to-do persons. Pretending to De interested In philanthropic nnd girl j rescue work, sho collected a lnrgc sural of money n the name of a charily in-j stitution, and discovery of this job; nipped her appointed in the bud. j After a few years of this sort of. activity she became too well Unown to the police to continue fashionable life in expensive hotels, so she look to renting -expensive furnished apartments apart-ments and then decamping with the more portable of their contents. HELEN AILEEN. Helen's sentimental rnd romantic ! career is quite as long and interesting interest-ing as her criminal record. She first married, when seventeen, a man living in her moi.ner's boarding house in "her mother's boardlr.g house In Chatham, Chat-ham, but they separated seven years (later. What happened to their two children Is not known. A year later, at an Edinburgh hotel, sho mot and captured an elderly local merchant, married him after a brief courtship' Mid left him four months lator. Her next adventure was with an Edinburgh University student. He succumbed to her charms and about a year after she had left the merchant thoy were married. mar-ried. Accumes Role of Heiress. This -romance was also a short one. for she soon quit him and returned to London, where she resumed the role of an heiress. Here she got "pally" with two men, one of them a baronet, and lived gayly on the money she got from them, supposedly for "rescue" work. Her last matrimonial venture was another university student, this lime from Rochdale, whom she met on his vacation in Edinburgh. When they returned re-turned to his home she failed to meet the approval of his family and Investigation Inves-tigation of her past reoulteu in an annulment and a bigamy prosecution. Helen's career is closed for eight years. Her lawyer at the Durham ! trial pleaded to the jury that she had been trying to live down her past, but her record was too much against her. and the woman, whom the judge described as one who "had evidently had great powers of fascination," will havo to discontinue h.or? practice until she Jut forty-five years old.