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The Atlanta Constitution,

Sunday, 7th December 1913,

PAGE 10, COLUMN 1.

Mrs. Hattie Barnett, the state's only licensed female detective.

In the first picture, she is shown examining evidence in with her assistant, Miss Emma Wright.

The next picture is of Mrs. Barnett in street clothes.

The bottom cut is one of Miss Wright's best poses.

The sketches show the different attitudes in which a woman detective is likely to be seen any day.

By Britt Craig.

In yellowback fiction, the heroine of the female detective story usually springs from concealment in a walnut cabinet, throws a brace of pearl-handled automatics in the face of the wrong doer and holds him or them with palms aloft while the detective-hero applies the manacles.

The fiction detectivess has done many, many things, including climbing church belfries on rainy nights and appearing on the scene forty-some-odd seconds prior to the proposed electrocution of the innocent hero.

She can inspire the love of the most incorrigible crook on Decatur Street and lead him to police station while he is under the belief he is being towed to the altar.

They are superb characters, those fiction female sleuths.

But you just ought to see a real, live one.

I did.

And she wasn't equipped with a pearl-handled automatic beneath her skirt.

Neither did she have a gold-enameled badge with a diamond stud.

She was dressed in ginghams with a snow-white apron, a towel would around her hair, and she was sweeping the kitchen with a broom heavy enough to daunt a stalwart man.

I had heard that she was a detective in fact, that she was the only licensed female detective in Georgia.

No matter how much faith I had put in rumor, it was difficult to believe my eyes.

Why, her kitchen was as spick as a pin, and the tinware reflected your features every time you got in front of it.

She was busy with an incipient cobweb in the ceiling when I hove up.

Her assistant, a comely young woman with brown hair and sleeves rolled up, who is said to be a regular flesh-and-blood Nemesis to shoplifters, was washing and drying dishes.

MAYBE I'D STRUCK THE WRONG PLACE.

I was more inclined to suspect that I had struct two thoroughly domesticated housewives than two "Halt, there, Hairbreadth" female sleuths of the first wool.

So I said, rather timorously:

"I'm a reporter on The Constitution. Somebody said you were detectives. Is it so?"

Mrs. Hattie Barnett stopped assailing the incipient cobweb.

Her assistant, Miss Emma Wright, threw the towel in the crook of her elbow and sat a China dish aside.

Both looked at me with pitying gaze.

"Why, certainly. Do you think we wash dishes and sweep kitchens for a living?"

I asserted that I did not that they each appeared talented enough on the surface to follow more temperamental avocations.

This is one of those bothersome reporter follows.

Emma," Mrs. Barnett told her assistant, "who has come out here to occupy our time. And, just think we haven't even finished the kitchen, yet!"

She sighed and stowed her broom in the corner.

"Oh, well," she moaned, "out with it.

I suppose you want to know how long I've been in the business, why I started to go into it, and what all I have done in my day. All that, and my age. But you won't get it!"

"How long have you been a detective?"

I put.

"Fourteen years."

"Fourteen years! You must have been very young as a beginner."

(It was an old trick of the trade, but it worked.)

"Oh, yes! I was only 16."

"Thanks," I replied, making a note of her age.

YOU WOULDN'T TAKE HER FOR A SLEUTH.

You never would suspect that Mrs. Barnett was a detective.

She is just a neat, striking woman of 30.

She says her personal appearance is one of her saving graces.

Folks never suspect her.

Her appearances are adaptable, and she can preside behind the ribbon counter of a Whitehall Street department store with the same grace and skill with which she maintains her poise at aristocratic marriages where she keeps a trained eye on the wedding gifts.

As Christmastide isn't much of a wedding season, Mrs. Barnett will be more in evidence behind the department store counters for the coming few weeks.

Shoplifters are her specialty.

She can detect a secret compartment in a woman's skirt the minute the woman gets within sight.

And she knows how to handle the type.

That's the greatest gift of the detective.

It's usually an easy matter to spot the kleptomaniac customer, but to catch her with the "goods on" and then diplomatically relive her of aforesaid goods is a task worthy of a female Nelson O'Shaughnessy you know him that manipulator of diplomacy down in the Mexic clime.

"It was last week that I had one of the hardest jobs of my career with a shoplifter," she told me.

"She was a young girl, evidently one of those irretrievable kleptomaniacs who have the habit so bad she would pilfer money out of one pocket and put it in the other."

She was pretty, too, and I really felt pity for her.

She came into the store late one afternoon during a rush hour.

That's the shoplifter's method.

They work the counters when everybody is absorbed in something else besides suspicious characters.

I noticed her over at the glove counter.

HOW TO CATCH A SHOPLIFTER.

"I was supposed to be selling novelties.

But the minute I saw this girl keeping a wary eye on the clerk behind the glove counter.

I turned my job over to a real clerk and sidled over.

The first thing I knew she was wearing off a costly pair of kids which she had tried on. I followed her to the elevator."

"There was a crowd at the gate. This girl was dressed splendidly, and I could tell by her appearance that she was well-bred enough to afford to raise a tremendous howl the minute I started anything.

So, as the car came up, I managed to jostle her into it with the crowd so she would have to go on up to the office floor."

"It's a mighty hard job sometimes to get them up to the office. They know they're guilty and try to avoid detection by every kind of ruse.

When the car got to the office floor which was the last I asked her to stop off with me a moment, as pleasantly as I could. She didn't seem to suspect me thought probably I had mistaken her identity. But she got off."

"'Were you speaking to me?' she asked."

"'Yes,' I told her.

'I wish you'd step into the office with me.'"

"She was either an amateur or just a rank beginner on her first theft, for she stepped into the office innocently enough.

I locked the door, and then she began to get frightened.

Then she began to put up a front.

Before she could say anything I asked her:

"'Where did you buy those gloves?'

She looked at them They were still on her hands and I could see her face redden."

"'Why, I bought them downstairs. Why do you ask?'

"

"'Then,' I told her, 'would you mind going down to the glove counter with me? I think there is a mistake somewhere.'"

"That girl broke down completely and fell over in a chair, crying like a baby. I had just about made up my mind to let her go, take back the gloves and say nothing about it, when she suddenly jumped up and went into a fury.

She threatened to have the store sued for everything from slander to malicious prosecution."

"She accused me of being an old hen and said I was so crude that I'd accuse the daughter of the president of stealing a nickel.

She gave me a family history as long as from here to the middle of next week, and said that if I suspected her of stealing, I could take that for reference.

She threatened to go downstairs to 'her automobile' and have the chauffeur come up and whip me.

GOODNESS, BUT SHE STORMED!

"Oh, Lord, but that girl went into a tantrum.

By the time she was half way through, an inexperienced person would have thought she was a vestal virgin.

She lambasted me until I had begun to feel like a wad of dough under a rolling pin.

When she had finished, she stopped for breath, then started for the door:"

"'Now,' she stormed, 'I shall go down to the bank and have father come up and see about this.'

Gee, but she was the indignant little thing.

'Oh, no you won't,' I told her.

'I'm going to do a little "seeing about things" on my own hook'.

About this time the manager knocked on the door and I let him in.

The girl raved and blazed and tromped up and down on me with both feet, and told the manager she was going to take her trade and her father's trade and the trade of her whole family away from his old store."

"The manager was convinced that a mistake had been made, but I wasn't.

I insisted that the girl accompany me down to the glove counter.

She got furious and asked the manager if he would stand for any such business.

It made me mad and, when I get riled, you had better look out there's a storm brewing."

"Very well, then, would you mind being searched. You ought to have seen how she received this.

She positively WOULD NOT!

'All right,' I told her, 'we can go to police headquarters, then, for I saw you with my own eyes steal those gloves.'

I started to pick up the telephone."

"'Wait a minute,' she called.

'I don't think there is any use in that. It will cause too much notoriety and humiliation. Here, take the gloves.'"

"I took them. But I wasn't satisfied with merely the gloves.

I demanded that she let me search her.

She finally wilted.

The manager stepped out.

Later, when I called for him to return, he found the whole sofa covered with every article from jewelry to linen towels, and the most subdued little girl in the world sitting in the corner, looking shame-facedly out the window.

She was one of the most expert shoplifters who ever struck the town.

Several days later she was arrested in a department store downtown and was convicted.

She tried to go put up a glorious bluff to the judge, but the evidence was against her.

I would have gone down and testified against her myself, but I admired her ability and respected her talent to a certain extent."

Mrs. Barnett has made an extensive study of the shoplifter type. It is a mania with most of them, she says, and she has encountered numerous cases of well-to-do women who can't resist the impulse to steal a pretty piece of finery.

Some of them, she says, find an inconsequential piece of goods maybe some trinket that strikes their eye.

They are ashamed to purchase it, and naturally steal it.

CLASSIFIES THE SHOPFLIFTERS.

She has classified the shoplifters with which she has had experience.

They are the professional, the aristocracy of her type, who is generally a non-resident, and gets out of town overnight.

The kleptomaniac, who can't resist the impulse, and who is usually a woman with a mania for finery and pretty clothes she cannot afford The poor working girl, whose eye is caught by some tempting possession, and who grows weak enough to steal when she realizes an opportune moment The girl who doesn't think it so awfully harmful to steal from a big department store, and who never passes up an opportunity.

Then there are other types unclassified types running all the way from the woman of wealth who pilfers a trinket now and then to the "girl of the streets," who steals because she hasn't money with which to buy.

There are on an average of a half dozen shoplifters apprehended in Atlanta a day, Mrs. Barnett told me.

But very few of this number, however, see police headquarters.

Department stores detest notoriety, and scenes are hurtful to business.

Whenever a shoplifter is caught, she is brought into the office and relieved of her loot.

She is given a stiff lecture, her name and address is taken and then she is sent from the store with orders never to return.

Other department stores are then notified of her case, and she thereafter finds things direfully unpleasant for her in the big stores of the city.

Now that the holidays are in full blast, Mrs. Barnett and her assistant are devoting their entire time to shoplifters.

Shoplifters, however, are not the only class of crooks with which Mrs. Barnett contends she and her able assistant, Miss Wright.

She had even been known to investigate affinities with such success as to remedy scandalous "love affairs."

She was employed by the state to investigate the Mary Phagan murder mystery, and for several days was employed in the National Pencil factory.

It was her influence which eventually resulted in the inauguration of a policewoman's department at police headquarters.

Her life's work has been concentrated more or less, to Atlanta and the vicinity.

HER EXPERIENCE IN MACON.

Once she was engaged in an investigation in Macon for a leading business house.

In the pursuit of this investigation, she was forced to on one occasion to shadow a young woman.

It happened that a number of other detectives were on the same case.

When Mrs. Barnett had followed her "shadow" for a few blocks, she discovered that she herself was being shadowed by another detective.

The detective shadowing Mrs. Barnett soon found that he was also being shadowed by still another detective.

This last detective none of whom were acquainted with each other looked around suddenly to learn that he was being trailed.

Later it developed that the original "Shadow" the one being "trailed" by Mrs. Barnett was also a female detective on her way to lunch.

Can you beat that for a true yarn?

All these foregoing facts I learned on that visit to Mrs. Barnett's spick and span little home out at 15 Woodward Avenue, where she spends whatever time she isn't detectiving, in cleaning up things and keeping house.

She is a widow, and there isn't anyone to care for except herself and her able assistant.

"I don't need a husband," she says.

"They're nuisances and get in the way."

And since that visit I have learned just how vast a difference there is in between the female sleuth of "yellow-back" exploitation and the real female detective of flesh and blood.

"The fiction woman detective," says Mrs. Barnett, "is like the giraffe the woman saw at the circus:

'There ain't no such animal.'"

PAGE 12, COLUMN 3

PROMINENT ALUMNI TO ATTEND BANQUET GIVEN BY CHI PHIS

The eleventh annual dinner of the local Alumni association of the Chi Phi fraternity will be held at 7 o'clock on the night of December 20 at the Georgian Terrace hotel, and promises to be one of the most enjoyable occasions of its kind.

There are a number of Chi Phis in Atlanta, and among the alumni are some of the most prominent men in the city and state.

An invitation has been extended to all members of the fraternity to attend the dinner, and they are asked to communicate at once with John T. Dennis, in the Atlanta National Bank building.

The officers of the association are Phinizy Calhoun president John G. Walker, vice president; Frank K. Boland, chairman of the executive board, and Mr. Dennis secretary and treasurer.

Among the prominent alumni who are expected to attend are Governor John M. Slaton, ex-Governor Joseph M. Brown.

Judge Ben H. Hill, Attorney General Thomas S. Felder and Judge John C. Hart, Bob Mc Whorter, some time carrier of a football for Georgia university, is due to be the most prominent representative of any active chapter of Chi Phi, although there will be many representatives from three chapters in Georgia.

PAGE 26, COLUMN 1

FRANK CASE WILL BE ARGUED DEC.

15

Set First on Criminal Calendar of Supreme Court.

Only Providential Causes May Work Delay.

On Monday, of next week, that is, on December 15, the celebrated Leo M. Frank case will be called up in the supreme court for argument.

This case has been put first on the criminal calendar of the court for the month, and is scheduled to be called at 9 o'clock on the morning of the date named.

Only providential causes, such as serious illness of one or more of the attorneys interested, could delay the hearing of the case.

Under the rules of the court prescribed in cases of this importance, there are two hours allowed for argument to the side.

In this case, however, it is pretty certain that the counsel for the plaintiff in error, Leo Frank, will ask for a longer time in which to present the case, and it is considered not unlikely that the court, considering the volume of the record and the great importance which has been attached to this case, will give the attorneys on both sides a longer time than the rules allow in which to present their argument.

Order of Debate.

The opening of the case will be by one of the attorneys for the plaintiff in error, either Mr. Rosser or Mr. Arnold.

He will be followed by the attorneys for the state, namely, Attorney General Thomas S. Felder and Solicitor Hugh Dorsey, and the argument will be concluded by the other attorney for Mr. Frank.

Ordinarily only two attorneys on a side are allowed to make the argument.

It is within the province of the court to dispense with this rule and allow arguments to be made by more than four, but it is not believed that this will be demanded.

The attorney general was out of the city Saturday, and the other attorneys in the case declared that they had made no arrangements as to the order in which the argument would be presented by them.

It is the opinion, however, of most of the supreme court attaches and others most familiar with the case that the argument will be opened by Mr. Arnold.

He will be followed by Messrs. Felder and Dorsey in turn, unless Mr. Felder should decide to yield the time allowed to him to Frank Hooper, who was associated with Mr. Dorsey in the prosecution of the case in the superior court.

Then the conclusion will be by Mr. Rosser.

Keen Interest in Case.

The notoriety which has been attached to this case, not only in Atlanta, but throughout the country, will cause the proceedings in the supreme court to be watched with almost as keen an interest as was the first trial in the superior court.

After the argument it will probably not be until the latter part of February or the first of March before the court hands down an opinion.

LAWYERS ARE BUSY WORKING ON BRIEF

In preparation for the fight before the state supreme court for and against the granting of a new trial in the case of Leo M. Frank, Solicitor General Dorsey and his assistant, A. E. Stephens, as well as Herbert Haas, counsel for Frank, are busily engaged in the briefs of the case, which must be in the hands of the clerk of the arguments of the case, which has already been set for December 15.

Solicitor General Dorsey secured a court order on Saturday which again brought into his hands the original papers in the Frank case, which have been held by the convicted man's attorneys for the past twenty-five days.

Immediately upon the papers being refiled with the clerk of Judge Ben Hill's court, Solicitor Dorsey retired to the state capitol, where he spent the day in the law library working over the prosecution's brief.

Herbert Haas, counsel for Frank, declared Saturday that he would have the defender's brief ready within the next two or three days, and would file it with the clerk of the supreme court long before the 15th of this month.

He declared that when Solicitor Dorsey first called on him Saturday for the original papers in the case, which he had been perusing, that he had not quite finished with them.

He also stated that when he was ordered by court edict to return them to the clerk of the superior court he had done so without delay.

PAGE 33, COLUMN 1

FIRST GRADE CAT BOYS' HIGH NAMES SOCIETY

By Willie Grist.

At the beginning of the 1913 school year the first grade C of Boys' High school, took pleasure in naming their society after one of the most well-known men in the city.

The gentlemen is Hon. Hugh M. Dorsey, who distinguished himself in the recent Frank trial.

The society was named "The Hugh M. Dorsey Literary and Debating society."

All the members of the class were in favor of this name, and we confidently expect a visit from Mr. Dorsey in the near future.

PAGE 34, COLUMN 1

Mrs. Hugh Willet Organizes Xmas Red Cross Seal Campaign

Mrs. Hugh Willett is general chairman of the volunteer committee which will sell the Anti-Tuberculosis Red Cross Christmas Seals.

At a large meeting held at her home yesterday, Mrs. Willet planned for systematic and active work to begin Wednesday, December 10, and to last through December 24.

Chairmen from among Atlanta's energetic women workers have been secured for the fourteen working days.

Each chairman will have a committee of fifty who will be stationed in office buildings, department stores, drug stores, hotels and other public places.

Mrs. John Parmalee is assistant general chairman to Mrs. Willett, and Mrs. Samuel Lumpkin is chairman of the City Federation Day, which is December 18.

She will ask each Federated club to provide a worker for that day, thus making her committee one of eighty members.

The chairmen of the Civic Ward clubs will have charge of selling the seals in the residence parts of the city.

Mrs. A. P. Coles will have charge of the committee on Woman's Club day and will bring the subject of the campaign before her club Monday afternoon.

Miss Mary Griffith, president of the Children of the Confederacy, will have a day, and the Boy Scouts, under their leader, will have a day.

Mrs. John M. Hill with a band of charming matrons sold seals Thursday at Fort Mc Pherson.

Other chairmen organizing their committees are Mrs. Rix Stafford and Mrs. W. J. Blalock; Mrs. D. R. Bootes, Mrs. Luther Rosser, Jr., Mrs. James D. Palmer, Mrs. C. H. Booth, Mrs. Leo Grossman, Mrs. J. M. Cooper, Mrs. B. M. Boykin, Mrs. W. W. Martin, Mrs. A. C. Mc Han, Mrs. Jerome Jones, Mrs. John Justice, and Doctor Florence Truax.

The sale of the Red Cross Christmas Seals is under the auspices of the Anti-Tuberculosis society, and is for the praiseworthy purpose of fighting the white plague.

That action in this direction is timely here is proven in the death rate from that disease here; the number of cases being looked after through the agency of the Associated Charities; the exhibit at present being made at the Child Welfare of the Anti-Tuberculosis work in Atlanta, and the exhibit from the Battle Hill sanitarium.

The work of this year's campaign is assured valiant activity under the inspiring leadership of Mrs. Hugh Willett.

No Christmas package will be complete in the message of the day unless somewhere upon it there is the sign of the Red Cross Christmas Seal.

Sunday, 7th December 1913: Atlanta's Female Detectives Are Not One Bit Like The Ones You Often Read About In Books, The Atlanta Constitution
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