BECK HARDWARE CO. LIMITED SHELF AND HEAVY HARDWARE Ranchers’ Supplies - Stoves and Ranges Furniture - Sporting Goods BURNS LAKE BRITISH COLUMBIA BURNS LAKE PLUMBING & ELECTRICAL SHOP F. HURSTFIELD, Proprietor Wiring: Electrical & Household Appliances Plumbing and Plumbing Fixtures Electrical and Plumbing Servicing Musical Instruments and Supplies Burns Lake, British Columbia A. G, BOWIE D. G. BOYD BOWIE & BOYD LTD. GENERAL DRY GOODS Ladies’ and Men's Wear Children’s Wear Boots and Shoes Burns Lake, British Columbia BURNS LAKE HARDWARE & GARAGE LTD. J. S. BROWN, Manager Builders’ Supplies Sporting Goods Harness - Furniture - Paints and Oils Camp and Miners’ Supplies, etc. Chevrolet and Oldsmobile Dealers BURNS LAKE British Columbia G. E. WILLIAMS Agent “SHELL” Petroleum Products Auto Accessories “Service and Satisfaction” Burns Lake, British Columbia Decker Lake Cafe Light Lunches Full Course Meals - * HOME MADE PIES AND CAKES * DECKER LAKE B.C. Decker Lake Hardware — General Hardware — ie . Fishing and Hunting Supplies Kw DECKER LAKE B.C. Silvertip Tire Service J. R. DUNDAS, Proprietor Tires - Batteries - Accessories Vulcanizing and Tire Service Standard Gasoline and Oil Massey Harris Farm Machinery BURNS LAKE BRITISH COLUMBIA Page Ninety was under the influence of a ‘truth serum,’ and the record was played in court. Unfortunately, however, the recording upset police calculations, because while he was under the serum the prisoner accused somebody else of the crime—whereas in his previ- ous statements he had virtually ad- mitted his own guilt. Finally, for those who like col- lecting statistical oddities. there was the revelation in the U.S. Govern- ment crime returns that America had 7,760 murders, and a serious crime was committed every eighteen sec- onds, during the previous year. Murder has been prominent in most countries through the year, but the strangest story comes from Cairo, where an Egyptian who had com- pleted a 20-year “‘stretch’’ for mur- der returned to his native village and found his alleged victim still alive. He was so infuriated that he strangled the man and then took the body to the police. Whereupon he was again charged with murder, sen- tenced to 20 years, and released im- mediately. Another resurrection of the “‘dead’’ occurred in Adelaide in October, when a woman recognized the man sitting next to her in a tram as her husband—believed to have been kill- ed during the war. He was suffering from amnesia, but recognized the fainting woman as his wife. And in Paris a hotel thief who found the body of a suicide swinging from a rope was calmly taking off the shoes when a last muscular spasm brought the body to “‘life’’ again. The thief received a violent kick on the jaw and fled screaming with ter- ror, right into the arms of a police- man outside the building. Almost equally strange was the experience of Constable Faddy at Newcastle in September, when he flashed his torch on a tailor’s shop window and noticed something pecu- liar about one of the dummies. It had its back to the window and, al- though dressed in a raincoat, it had a dinner jacket and an overcoat over one arm. When he held the light steady he saw that the “dummy” was actually a shopbreaker. Two other good “‘captures’’ were the arrest of a prominent business man by the local constable at Barrow- on-Soar, when he identified him as a war-time deserter from a descrip- tion circulated in the ‘‘Police Ga- zette’’; and the arrest of a car thief in Leeds by Constable Schofield when he saw a stranger driving his aunt's Cale In another stolen car case at Leeds, it was found that the engine number did not tally with the registration book, and investigations showed that it had been stolen in Oxford in 1946, and the ostensible owner at Leeds was then charged with receiving it. On the lighter side of the 1948 crime record there were the following cases :— A young Parisian clerk, Jeanette Pideau, stole 50,000 francs from her employer in four months. All the money was spent on cream cakes and eclairs, and she told the court that owing to war-time shortages she had developed an obsession for sweet cakes. The judge said that she must have eaten 2,000 cakes, and gave her fifteen months to recover from her taste. A dog belonging to a Cricklewood family howled so much that the fam- ily could not listen to the radio, so they brought him in and made him sit quietly before the fire. Meanwhile a housebreaker climbed through the bedroom window and _ collected £7,000 worth of jewellery from the room above. When the burglar alarm at a Can- adian bank sounded, armed police surrounded the premises. only to find that the cause was a woodpecker peck- ing at the alarm wires outside the building. In Sheffield a woman shoplifter, seen to take 161 articles in an hour and a half, claimed that she was stealing them for the benefit of the Christmas bazaar of the local Com- munist Association. At Little Weighton. Yorkshire, housewives going to draw water found two village pumps had been stolen during the night and a third one had been “‘attempted.”’ And drinks of a different kind were temporarily cut off by some- body who broke into a Yorkshire brewery and knocked the bungs out of 250 barrels of beer. Three thou- sand gallons—enough to supply six- teen public houses with their weekly quota—ran to waste. Reprinted from articles by “‘Scrivener’’ in the British Police Chronicle and the New South Wales Police News. Why Police Wagons Are Called “Black Marias” WHY ARE police wagons called “Black Marias’’? It is just a subtle police compli- ment to a lady who was very useful to them in the past. The wagon is named after a negress called Maria Lee, who kept a lodging-house for seamen in Boston (U.S.A.) She was a giantess, and immensely strong, and often the police called on her to help them drag difficult and boisterous prisoners to the lock-up. When the authorities hit upon the scheme of using a vehicle for the con- veyance of prisoners, they very fit- tingly named it “Black Maria.’’ THE SHOULDER STRAP