A CLEVER SWINDLER.

Evening Star, Issue 3039, 14 November 1872, Page 4

A CLEVER SWINDLER.

The following is from the Australasian of theVthult. : A clever but mean swindler, named Henry Spepcef, alias “ The Swindling Parson,” has got his deserts at the hands m 1 thjj Cj jiy Bench. He was charged with being an idle and disorderly person, having no lawful visible means of support, and evidence was given that he had gone round to hotels and to tjie shops of poor women, making a trifling purchase, putting down a pound, re* ceiving the change, and then protesting that the silver was half a sovereign or five shillings short, and “ bouncing” the roan, woman, or child at the counter into giving him the difference over again. He thus made one or two pounds a day. In two hotels the landlords refused to be bullied, and he went away without the half-sovereign he had sought-to extort, and promising that he should be heard of again. When heard of again he was in custody. At one hotel he was so jovial that he took the heart of the landlord by storm, and would have got away with half a sovereign too much had b« not overdone the thing by insisting on being searched. The landlord then suspecting his customer, took back the half-sovereign he had offered, and told him to take legal proceeding* for its recovery if he thought he had been cheated. Spencer indignantly left and did not retui n. The prisoner came to the Colony in the year 18(15 from Adelaide, and had been but little out of gaol since. He was released from prison here in 1871, and went to New South Wales, where he did a couple of sentences in Darlinghurst Gaol. He arrived here afterwards, and was sentenced to a month’s imprisonment for stealing a pair of boots at Emerald Hill. He came out about six weeks ago and had been changing pound notes with profit ever since, He was a young ruddy-complexioucd man, well-dressed and respectable looking, apd had just the offhand genial manner which would put trades; men off their guard when combined with a good appearance. About half-a-dozen shop, keepers (out of a crowd in the Court) narrated bow they had been taken in by the prisoner. He was sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment with hard .ahor.