A Clever Shoplifter. — Detective Wooldridge Finds a Fair Criminal
While passing through the Fair, one of the largest retail dry goods establishments in Chicago, Detective Wooldridge noticed one of the cleverest shoplifters that ever operated in Chicago, Bertha Lebecke, known as “Fainting Bertha.”
She was standing in front of the handkerchief counter, where her actions attracted Wooldridge’s attention, and he concluded to watch her. She called the girl’s attention to something on the shelf and as she turned to get it Bertha’s hand reached out and took a half dozen expensive lace handkerchiefs, which disappeared in the folds of her skirt.
The act was performed so quickly and with such cleverness that it would have gone unnoticed unless one were looking right at her and saw her take the handkerchiefs.
From the handkerchief counter she went to the drug department, where she secured several bottles of perfume. As she was leaving this counter she met a Central detective who had arrested her before for the same offense. He stopped a few yards from her to make some trifling purchases. She, thinking he was watching her, left the store.
From the Fair she went to Siegel-Cooper’s, another large dry goods store several blocks away. Detective Wooldridge followed her. She was seen to go from counter to counter, and from each one she succeeded in getting some article.
As she was leaving the store she was placed under arrest by Detective Wooldridge and taken to the Police Station.
When she was arrested she fainted, and a great crowd gathered around her, and many of the women cried and implored Detective Wooldridge not to arrest her, but he would not be moved by any of them to let her go free.
When she arrived at the Police Station she was searched, and beneath the folds of her skirt was found a strong waist pocket which looked like a petticoat. It consisted of two pieces of material gathered full at the top with a strong cord or puckering string run through, and sewed together around the edges. In front of this great bag was a slit two feet long opening from the top to within a few inches of the bottom. This petticoat was worn under the dress skirt. On each side of the outside skirt was a long slit concealed by the folds of the skirt, and with one hand she could slip the stolen articles in through the slit in the inside of her dress and into the petticoat bag to the opening in front. The capacity of the bag was enormous. She had stolen some $40 or $50 worth of goods when arrested. The following morning she was arraigned in the Police Court and heavily fined, and the goods were restored to the merchants.
Bertha Lebecke, 27 years old, is conceded by Illinois state authorities to be the most troublesome person who ever crossed the state line from any direction at any time.
Just how large a cash bonus the state treasury today might be willing to advance could it be assured of Bertha’s deportation forever beyond the confines of Illinois is something difficult to estimate, but it is certain that in the asylums for the insane at Kankakee, Elgin and Bartonville, and in the state penitentiary at Joliet there are attendants on salaries who would make personal contributions to help swell the possible fund.
Yet “Fainting Bertha” Lebecke is one of the prettiest, blondest, most delicate handed little bits of well-developed femininity that ever made a marked success in deceiving people of both sexes and all conditions in public, afterwards deceiving officials of jails, asylums and penitentiaries until bars and gates and frowning walls were as cobwebs before her.