Frauds on the Wesleyan Conference

Feilding Star, Volume VII, Issue 128, 8 April 1886, Page 3

Frauds on the Wesleyan Conference

At the Manchester assizes the oiher day, John Harton, late assistant Secretary to the Wesleyan Methodist Trust Fund at Manchester, pleaded guilty to embezzling £5000 of the money of the fund. Mr Justice Grantham, in sentenchiru to fire years' penal servitude, said it was almost incredible that a Society like the Wesleyan Conference should hare kept its accounts in such a way as to allow of these frauds being carried on for so long without discovery. The fact was somewhat, startling to the members of the Society, many of whom were poor, and who could ill afford to lose their contributions to charitable objects. There was no excuse for the prisoner's conduct, and whether the Eev. Mr Tindall, the Secretary, was a proper Secretary or not, it was almost incomprehensible that he did not discover these frauds. It was one of the most extraordinary revelations of mismanagement of a charity fund which had, in his experience, ever been made public, and he felt bound in the interests of charity, and of those who devoted so much time and so much labor, and wko gave so much money to charitable objects, to caution them, and see that their servants were not allowed the opportunity of committing such frauds as these.