The Rise Of The Cat Burglar

They scaled walls, climbed through lofty windows, and preyed on the grandest mansions in the land. Eloise Moss introduces the high-climbing criminals who stole Britons’ jewellery – and sometimes their hearts – in the 1920s and 30s

- Eloise Moss

“Cat burglar who holds women fascinated!” On 20 December 1934, this headline announced to readers of the Daily Mirror that one Robert Delaney had been sent to prison for burglary and a string of other crimes.

For centuries, newspapers had filled their pages with tales of opportunistic thieves preying ruthlessly on unsuspecting victims. But Delaney was somehow different. Gone was the contempt with which reporters often treated the perpetrators. It was replaced by intrigue, even admiration.

Delaney’s multiple escapades, clambering up the edifices of several wealthy Mayfair mansions to purloin jewellery from the bedrooms of the nobility, had earned him the moniker, the ‘king of cat burglars. The News of the World positively swooned in its depiction of “an auburn-haired, debonair young fellow, who has given Scotland Yard more to think about than any dozen ordinary criminals”.

Now, stoking the press’s fascination further still, Delaney was also charged with bigamy. It was alleged that he had married two women and “squandered” the £27,000 fortune of one of his wives, who he apparently left destitute.

“You are a menace to society,” Delaney was told as he was sentenced to nine years’ penal servitude (his third spell in prison). The judge was right: Delaney was a menace. But that didn’t stop the public lapping up every last detail of his crime spree.