Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 160, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 July 1920 — HURT BY "DOUBLE" [ARTICLE]

HURT BY "DOUBLE"

Englishman Victim of Unusual Circumstances. --r-, ) ’ —————— Reduced to Penury Through the Operations of Man Who Resembles Him With a Fidelity That Must Be Remarkable. Somewhere in England flourishes a brilliant scoundrel who is committing fraud after fraud in the name of Herbert Leslie * Perkins, an impoverished herb seller of Wolverhampton, writes a foreign correspondent of the Kansas City Star. . . v He is said to look exactly like Perkins, even to a tendency to stoop. He dresses like him, has the same mannerisms and voice, and is sufficiently familiar with Perkins’ past to assume his identity before acquaintances —but he cannot write like him. For this theft of his personality Perkins has paid painfully. He has been Imprisoned five times, being acquitted each time at the subsequent trial. Four warrants are now out for bls arrest, and a cloud of suspicion hangs over him that may result in other warrants. His savings of SSOO have been spent to earn his freedom, and most of his fur-niture-And his wife’s keepsakes have been sold to support his family of six childrenwhile be has been in Jail. He was first’ arrested October 15, 1919, for fraud at Gloucester. Five days after his release he was arrested, again and; taken tori Chesterfield, in Derbyshire; wfifete he was remanded for trial on the declarations of four persons that there could be no doubt he was the man who had defrauded them. Yet he never had been in Chesterfield before in his life. At the Derbyshire assizes he proved that on the day of the fraud he was at the Uttoxeter market In Staffordshire. Fourteen old specimens of his handwriting were produced. None of them was anything like the criminal’s. • The jury promptly acquitted Perkins. While his friends were congratulating him in the courtroom a policeman pressed forward and arrested him for other alleged frauds. They dragged him off to Hull police station, where Perkins says he lay that night wondering if he.was “mad or only.dreaming.” In Hull he was again positively identified, and he had to remain 18 days in Hull prison before his trial. This time he had 14 witnesses to prove his presence at various markets distant froto Hull on the dates that the frauds were committed. "I could have produced sixty witnesses,” said Perkins, "but it took my last cent to pay the fares of the fourtOOD.” The operations of the “slick” double hurt the police nearly as much as Perkins. They have four warrants for his arrest for a number of other frauds committed at Burtbn-on-Trent, Peterborough, Bristol and Leicester. The warrants are pigeonholed for the time being. The police are ruminating. Pennflesa, Perkins busily is digging up bis herbs again and trying to sen them, but after 27 days in jail and with the shadow of prison bars still hovering over him he has, little peace of mind.