Thank you, you beautiful maniac, for reading Strange Times! If you missed last week’s Strange Pulp story, “Librarian With a Chainsaw,” do not lose hope. Read Part One here and Part Two here.

Today brings burglars! Burglars who are women! Burglars who are children! Burglars with flagging thyroids! Burglars just three feet tall! Burglars who like lollypops! Get burgling on…

June 16, 1921

• Attempting to prove he has “no yellow streak,” ex-Marine George Korach leaps from the Williamsburg Bridge, falling 135 feet and fracturing his skull on impact.

• As many as one billion German marks may have been lost in a massive swindle, by a group of “Sportbanks” that promised 95% dividends on invested funds, which they attempted to recoup by betting their clients’ money on fixed horse races.

• A divorce suit declares Peggy Hopkins Joyce to be an adventuress and “dark star of destiny,” charging her with ruining the lives of three men through wanton lust and greed.

• The Weather: Fair today and Friday; not much change in temperature; fresh northwest and west winds.

You will be surprised and perhaps disappointed to learn that the “Woman Burglar” referred to in the headline is a woman who burgles, not a burglar who steals women. In any event, this item should provide comfort for subscribers suffering from hyperthyroidism who have wondered about their glandular compulsion to steal.

Medical treatment of glands in the neck of Mrs. Fannie Liebowitz, 36 years old, of 633 Sendiker Avenue, Brooklyn, which are believed to be the cause of her criminal tendencies, will be provided by direction of County Judge William R. Bayes, in a hope of restoring her to normality.

Judge Bayes postponed sentence on Mrs. Liebowitz yesterday with this end in view. The woman pleaded guilty several days ago to burglary. The police said she had served a term in the penitentiary for burglary in 1911, and in 1914 was sentenced to Auburn Prison for five years and six months for a similar offense. It is said she comes from a good family, and never has been in want.

In endeavoring to ascertain the cause of her delinquency, Judge Bayes had Mrs. Liebowitz examined by a physician, who expressed a belief that if the woman’s glands were cured she would lose the criminal tendency. Judge Bayes said he would defer sentence until the experiment to effect a cure had been tried.

The examination on which Judge Bayes’s decision was reached was made by Dr. Ernest N. Vaughan, medical assistant to the Kings County District Attorney. He said that Mrs. Liebowitz is legally sane, but “dull mentally.” She is suffering, he said, from hyperthyroidism, a disease in which certain oils in the thyroid glands have dried. If she were treated with thyroid extract, through injection and otherwise, Dr. Vaughan said, this condition might be relieved, and her criminal tendency disappear.

The disease rarely manifests itself in criminal tendencies, Dr. Vaughan said, but makes the subject an easy victim to various diseases. The case is said to be the first of its kind on record in Kings County Court.

No word yet on the state of these children’s thyroid glands.

When two detectives brought seven-year-old Joseph Agassano into the East Twenty-second Street Police Station yesterday and led him into the detective bureau, he calmly seated himself on a chair, dragged a lollypop from his pocket and nonchalantly began to comfort himself with it.

“Where did you get the lollypop,” asked one of the detectives.

“Swiped it,” said Joseph, coolly, and went on with his pastime.

When they got through checking up all of the things that Joseph and his pals had done they found that there was a lot besides lollypops they had to account for, but candy and other things to eat had been sufficient incentive for them to crack a safe or jimmy open an office desk.

There were five of the boys whom detectives Martin Meyers and August Gillmann gathered in yesterday, and then heaved a sigh of relief to know that the petty burglaries which have plagued the precinct for weeks were at an end.

The other boys under arrest are Patrick Murphy, the leader, who calls himself “Paddy, the Kid Leader,” 14 years old, and living at 317 East Twenty-first Street; Mathew Agostinello, 9, of 310 East Nineteenth Street, known as “Skinny”; Walter Michaelsky, 10 of 346 First Avenue, “The Polack,” and John Rubsha, 13, of 342 East Twenty-first Street, “The Dummy.” Joseph Agassano lives at 345 East Twenty-first Street.

Joseph seemed to be the smartest, even though Paddy, by virtue of his size and seniority, was the leader. Joseph knows how to open safes by listening to the tumblers click. The detectives said that he opened a safe that was in the Empire Hat Company offices at 316 East Twenty-second Street, a week ago, and got enough small change to give each of the boys $1.08.

Joseph also made the interesting admission that he used to carry a pistol, but as he is only three feet tall and weighs not more than sixty pounds, a six-shooter on the hip sort of dragged him down, so he left it at home.

When Detective Meyers and Gillmann were passing the Standard Gas Company Plant at Twenty-second Street and First Avenue yesterday they heard a small boy say: “It’s easy to break into this factory.”

The two watched the boy and saw him try to climb a fire-escape. They plucked him from the ladder, told him he was a young rascal and to come along with them. The boy turned out to be Murphy, and when the detectives had talked to him a bit, he said: “Well, I Guess you’ve got me right. I’ll come across.”

One of the most successful nights the young prowlers confessed to having was the night they went to the Thirty-ninth Street Theatre after the performance and broke into the manager’s office. They tried to open the safe, but Joseph’s practiced ear somehow missed the combination. The band had a jimmy and a flashlight, so they explored several desk drawers and found five pairs of opera glasses and five boxes of candy. They ate the candy and, deciding they wanted more, went to the Phenix Candy Company plant at 372 Second Avenue, and collected lollypops and “kisses.” The boys smashed several thousand dollars worth of machinery.

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