er" within 200 yards, and the road in front of
the post office was thronged with excited people. The thieves in this
case got off with cash and stamps to the value of L328.

Later in the same year, the South Kensington Branch Post Office was
entered by burglars under precisely similar circumstances. The thieves
only obtained the small sum of L6, as, being disturbed, they decamped in
haste, leaving behind them their tools and certain articles of clothing.
They had removed the safe, weighing 1-1/2 cwt., from the public office
without being observed, although it was taken from a spot immediately in
front of a large window, through which police and passers-by could
command full view of the office. The Westbourne Grove and Peckham Branch
Post Offices were also burglariously entered in the same year. Although
the burglars were not discovered in connection with these post office
robberies, and none more daring of their kind have occurred since, they
probably were imprisoned for some other misdemeanour. Was it--it may
well be asked--this same gang of burglars released from durance vile who
committed the post office robbery which in 1901 took place at
Westbury-on-Trym, a suburb of Bristol, three miles distant from the
city? For daring it might well have been they, as the following account
will demonstrate.

The post office, be it said, was in the middle of the village and within
200 yards of the Gloucestershire Constabulary Depot, and actually within
sight of it. It was during the early hours of the morning of the 18th
October that the burglary took place. Not far from the post office
building operations were being carried on, and from the houses in course
of erection the thieves obtained a ladder and a wheelbarrow. Making
their way to the side of the premises, one member of the gang, by means
of the borrowed ladder effected an entrance through the fanlight over
the postmen's room door, and marks of damp stockinged feet revealed the
fact that they crept through a sliding window into the post office
counter room, where the safe was located. The street door was then
opened to their confederates, and the safe, weighing nearly 2 cwt., was
carried to the barrow outside. The thieves retired to a partially
completed dwelling for the purpose of examining the contents of the
safe. They broke open the carpenter's locker, and many tools were
subsequently found on the floor. These evidently had not assisted the
gang to any great extent, as