False Alarm Leads to Arrest of Three

Camden Courier-Post - February 21, 1936

Girl Accused of Vagrancy When Found in Closet of House With Smoking Stove

A passerby who thought he saw a house afire on Taylor Avenue near Third street, turned in an alarm that brought four fire companies on a monkey run yesterday. It required more than five minutes to find the house reported a fire when the apparatus pulled up at the alarm box at Third and Federal streets.

Two policemen, Sergeant Nathan Petit and Marshall Thompson, who followed firemen to the scene were quicker than that for they found the house and a young woman hiding in the closet on the second floor. She was arrested along with a woman and a man.

Taken to police headquarters the young woman, who identified herself as Margaret Pone, 17, of Park Avenue, Maple Shade, was held on a charge of vagrancy.

Margaret Johns, and Louis Archer, 39, both Negroes, who were also found in the three-story dwelling at 230 Taylor Avenue, were also held as material witnesses.

The reported fire turned out to be the smoking stove.