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 £6, 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 Depôt, 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 they found it necessary to use a heavy pickaxe. The noise they made seems to have aroused the inmates of the neighbouring houses, and it is said that one resident struck a light and actually saw them at work, but he concluded that they were merely doing something in connection with the extensive drainage alterations which had been in progress for many months. This light apparently disturbed the thieves, for they departed with their burden and the pickaxe and retraced their steps. Close to the Parish Institute they managed, in spite of the darkness, to discover a gap in the hedge, and having forced the wheelbarrow through this, they left unmistakable traces of the route taken across the adjoining field.