Page 111 - IT'S A RUM LIFE BOOK FOUR Volume 1 "Northcote 1984 to 1998"

SOME OF THE NOT SO GOOD TIMES

BURGLARY ONE

It happened here in the spring of 1992. This, behind 'Ebony' and the children was our new
Harness Room, built a year or so before to give us more room and make the harness more
secure.
Everything was put together, older and more valuable together with the newer modern
harness bought especially to work the heavy horse ride drays.
At the time we were unworldly of the ways of thieves.
We were not aware that they had been among us as visitors and done their homework well
before the event. They knew full well what we had got and how it was stored. They knew
what they could sell and planned their attack.

So it came as a total surprise. We arrived on site one morning to prepare for the visitors of
the day to find the harness room doors sagging off their hinges and everything gone.
Absolutely everything!

SHOCK
The police did come before the visitors, but they did not have much enthusiasm for the job.
We gave them a detailed list of what had been stolen and shortly we were contacted by an
officer from the special crimes unit who told us that we had been victims of a planned
group of burglaries all on the same night. The first had been in Yorkshire, the second on
the Nottinghamshire border, (a family we actually knew from the British Driving Society)
and we had been the third and last.

The officer told us he understood the thieves had more than likely sold the harness before
they stole it and the whole lot was probably in a container en route to its new owner as he
spoke.