THEFT OF CLOTHING

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20127, 22 December 1939, Page 8

THEFT OF CLOTHING

YOUNG MAN IN COURT SLEPT OUT OF DOORS “The report of the probation officer is not too good and it appears that you have been doing nothing for the past six months. If you do not get work you might find yourself before the court on a more serious charge,” said the Bench, Messrs. F. J. H. Ellisdon and M. Doyle, J.Ps., in the Police Court this morning when placing James Clarence Cook, aged 23, a farm labourer, on probation for one year. Cook pleaded guilty to the theft at Makauri on December 17 of a quantity of clothing and shaving gear valued at £3 14s Gd, the property of Mervyn Robert Jeffrey. Constable G. Waple, who prosecuted, said that Cook had stayed a night with Jeffrey and had returned on the following night when he knew that the family would be absent from the house and taken the articles. Cook had taken the stolen property to the Childers Road Reserve, where he had slept for two nights. It appeared that the accused was of the vagrant typo as he had been wasting time about town ' for some weeks. First he stayed at a boarding house for three or four weeks and had got his board on the pretence that he was expecting to get work in a wool store. Suddenly he left the boarding house, leaving his clothes behind. Later he' went to an hotel for two days, and when asked about payment said he was expecting some money. He left there, too, hurriedly, and without paying his debt. He was appearing before the court as a first offender.