EMBEZZLEMENT BY A COLLECTOR OF CUSTOMS.

Auckland Star, Volume I, Issue 219, 21 September 1870, Page 2

EMBEZZLEMENT BY A COLLECTOR OF CUSTOMS.

At the Sandwich Quarterly Sessions, John Frith Heatly, late Collector of Her Majesty's Customs of Ramsgate, was charged, on four separate indictments, with embezzling certain moneys belonging to her Majesty at Ramsgate, to wit, £5 0, and between the 21st of March and 26th of April, 1870, £441 11s. 8;1. on the 2G:h of April, 1870, and £210 17s. lid. on the 27th of April, 1870, and having pleaded guii'.ty to it, the Kecorder,in passing sentence, said that the offences to which the prisoner had pleaded guilty were of a very heinous character indeed, and thelawallowcd him toinflictpenalservitude for so long a term as 14 years. It was painful to see a man of the prisoner's position standing to receive the sentence of the law ; and though his offences would be visited with the greatest severity the law allowed, yet he thought it to be his duty to sentence him to a severe punishment, which was that he be sent to penal servitude for five years. The prisoner was then removed, the prisoner's wife, who had been accommodated with a seat upon the Bench, retiring at the same time apparently in much mental distress.