Fake Exposed By Telephone

1903

Young Woman, Pretending to Be a Mute, Foiled in Her Game

A Poughkeepsie (N. Y.) telegram to the Philadelphia Inquirer says that a young woman giving her name as Delia Flynn called on several of the pastors in the city, posing as a mute and describing her pitiable condition with pen and pencil.

Chief of Police McCabe at that moment came in and began to express sympathy for the woman. Suddenly he stepped to the telephone and began an imaginary conversation.

"We have a woman here," he said, "who says she comes from Albany. We must know all about her history, as she cannot talk, or she must be sent to the penitentiary."

The woman, hearing this, made a dash for the door, and fought desperately to get out of the station. Chief McCabe took her into his office and questioned her.

The woman said that she had feigned dumbness in Albany, Troy, Philadelphia, and Brooklyn. She declared that she was compelled to beg for a one-armed man, Edward Burnett of Brooklyn, with whom she eloped from her home in Philadelphia when she was 16 years old. She is now 22.