When she arrived at the Police Station she was searched, and beneath the folds of her skirt was found a strong waist pocket which looked like a petticoat. It consisted of two pieces of material gathered full at the top with a strong cord or puckering string run through, and sewed together around the edges. In front of this great bag was a slit two feet long opening from the top to within a few inches of the bottom. This petticoat was worn under the dress skirt. On each side of the outside skirt was a long slit concealed by the folds of the skirt, and with one hand she could slip the stolen articles in through the slit in the inside of her dress and into the petticoat bag to the opening in front. The capacity of the bag was enormous. She had stolen some $40 or $50 worth of goods when arrested. The following morning she was arraigned in the Police Court and heavily fined, and the goods were restored to the merchants. Bertha Lebecke, 27 years old, is conceded by Illinois state authorities to be the most troublesome person who ever crossed the state line from any direction at any time. Just how large a cash bonus the state treasury today might be willing to advance could it be assured of Bertha's deportation forever beyond the confines of Illinois is something difficult to estimate, but it is certain that in the asylums for the insane at Kankakee, Elgin and Bartonville, and in the state penitentiary at Joliet there are attendants on salaries who would make personal contributions to help swell the possible fund. Yet "Fainting Bertha" Lebecke is one of the prettiest, blondest, most delicate handed little bits of well-developed femininity that ever made a marked success in deceiving people of both sexes and all conditions in public, afterwards deceiving officials of jails, asylums and penitentiaries until bars and gates and frowning walls were as cobwebs before her. SLEEPS ALL DAY; MAKES NIGHT HIDEOUS. Gates of steel never have held her in jail or asylum. In the mightier penitentiaries she has made herself such an uncontrolled fury by night--sleeping calmly all day long and resting for the next seance--that penitentiary gates have opened for her in the hope of having her maintained as an asylum ward. After which "Fainting Bertha" has secured keys to asylum doors and gone her untrammeled way straight back to a police record which for years has shown her to be one of the most remarkable pickpockets, diamond snatchers and shoplifters of her time. Making such a nuisance of herself in the penitentiary as no longer to be tolerated in a refined convict community, she proves her madness. In the locked, barred, asylum she proves her cunning at escape. And, once more at liberty, the abandon with which she goes after personal property in any form, at any time and under any circumstances, proves her skill as a thief and her unbalance in the "get away."