STOLEN CERTIFICATES

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 33, 9 February 1933, Page 13

STOLEN CERTIFICATES

YOUNG MEN IN COURT

VERDICTS OF GUILTY

The . unusual course of not going into the witness box but of making a statement from the dock after his counsel' had addressed the Court was adopted by Gilbert James Edwin Northcott in the Supreme Court yesterday afternoon. Northcott and another young man, Dennis Henry Fryer, were jointly charged with breaking and entering and theft from the premises of the Manchester Manufacturing Company and Henry Schneideman and Sons, Ltd., with alternative charges of theft and receiving. In addition, Northcott. was charged with breaking and entering, tlie counting bouse of Harold Edwards in November, 1930, and stealing Post Office investment certificates, share certificates, and cash of a total value of. £350. Alternatively he was charged with stealing, and receiving the t . investment certificates, and he was further. charged with stealing* two cameras. I Mr. C. Evans-Sebtt prosecuted,. Mr. R. L. A. Cresswell appeared for Northcott, and Mr. D. McGrath for Fryer. ■

LETTERS THAT WENT ASTRAY.

Giving evidence yesterday afternoon, Detective N. Waterson produced two letters which Northcott had given to a man named McCarthy at the Mount Crawford prison with a .request that McCarthy should give them to another prisoner who was to be given his liberty that day. In one letter Northcott asked a man named Jock to come to Court and say that he had been with Northcott in an hotel bar when Northcott bought a camera from an unknown man. In the other letter Northcott made a request that it should be rewritten and then sent to a woman as coming from "Ned." "Ned" was'to be made to say that he had stolen suits and clothing from Schneideman's warehouse and had- sold some of the clothing ,to Northcott, having a hard job to do so. •

ACCUSED'S STATEMENT.

From the dock Northcott said that none of the trade marks on the clothing produced in Court had been interfered with. E'eferring to his payment of passage money for a trip to England, he said he had the money from the sale of his home in 1931. _ After a short retirement the jury found Northcott guilty on the three breaking and entering and theft charges, of the theft of the two cameras, and of receiving the Post Office investment certificates.. Fryer: was found guilty on the two counts of receiving, with a recommendation to,mercy. . _ Both prisoners were remanded for sentence. _______"