HOARD OF SMUGGLERS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 50, 15 November 1946, Page 3

HOARD OF SMUGGLERS

CLEARING DEPOT DISCOVERED

BIG CUSTOMS LOSS

The secret of 61 Portland Terrace, Southampton—a small house with faded curtains and dusty windows—was revealed to the borough magistrates recently. It was a' smugglers’ clearing depot, sought since March by C.I.D. men co-operating with Customs officers. .

Police watched* it night and day for a week- before Detective Sergeant John Quinlan forced the doors of two locked rooms and discovered a haul of American luxury goods on which the Customs had lost a four-figure sum. Quinlan found more than 1000 lip sticks, hundreds of bottles of nail varnish and thousands of razor blades.

Meanwhile, in London, the occupier, 73. year old Daniel Davis, has been aia-ested at a platform barrier on Waterloo Station.. Detectives found more dutiable goods in two suitcases hp had with him. He was said to have confessed he had “bought them from sailors and men in the docks.”

Davis was brought to court from prison where he began a threemonths’ sentence for offences arising from his pavement-pitch trade outside a big store in the town. Mr P. C. R. Noble, prosecuting, said the police now knew that Davis not only used the house as receiving depot for goods smuggled by sailors, but he had further interests outside the framework of the organisation.

So Davis went back to gaol with six months added to his sentence for evading duty and purchase tax on the goods and for having no import license.