Encouraging Crime

Feilding Star, Volume VI, Issue 55, 18 October 1884, Page 3

Encouraging Crime

Judge; Johnston,, in his charge to the Christchurch Grand Jury, made fcliese references,, to the fashionable crime of forgery : — " It, was a strange thing to him -that, nohyithstanding the public exposition day after day of the folly of people taking cheques, tho facilities afforded' to persons to commit the crime of forgery hare by no means diminished. | It was true that they did pretend to take care in the . matter of cashing cheques, Ifut in truth and in fact they took none at aIL In one case the person receiving the cheque said to tho man presenting it* Oh, you got this tor wages'; and on the reply being made in tho affirmative, ho was told to put his narao on the back of the cheque, as if that was any pro- j tcctian at all. In another case the: cheque was signed 'Joint,' and the remark was made * Oh, that is Mr Joynt, the .lawyer' ; the fact being that Mr joynt did not spell his name that way at all. It would' thus be seen that the questions asked wore such as to suggest the answer to be given, and were no protection at all a g to the genuineness of the qheque. Foople who did this, and were deceived, deserved to be deceived; but it was not only this— the public also had to suff-r, because the State had to support them, and the people who thus easily committed crime became criminals. AH that it appeared necessary to do was to borrow a blank cheque and fill it up, iaj, for Ll2, and having obtained L 2 worth of goods, pocket LLO moro. It was an exceedingly strange thing that people would place temptations to crime pe.fore those who were thus enticed as it Were to fall."