REQUEST FOR MATCH

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20128, 23 December 1939, Page 9

REQUEST FOR MATCH

EARLY MORNING VISIT GAOL TERM EXTENDED As the result of his going to a house at 3.30 o’clock in the morning allegedly to ask for a match with which tc light a cigarette, Thomas Forde, alias David Thomas Thomas, alias Thomas Downes, aged 38, a labourer, appeared yesterday before Messrs. F. -J. H. Ellisdon and M. Doyle, J.Ps., in the Police Court and was sentenced to imprisonment for one week.

The charge against him, to which he pleaded guilty, was that he was found without lawful excuse, but in circumstances that did not disclose the commission or intention to commit any other offence, in the enclosed yard of premises at 58 Salisbury road.

Constable G. Waple, who presecuted, recalled that early on the morning of December 14 Forde was arrested on a charge of drunkenness and, in a scuffle, evaded the police. He had been arrested the following day and was serving a sentence of two weeks’ imprisonment as an alternative to paying a fine of £5 that was imposed upon him on the charge of resisting arrest.

Constable Waple said that an hour or two after this incident the accused knocked on the door of a house in Salisbury road. A woman answered the door and was asked if the “boss" was home. She had been too frightened to say that he was not and answered that he was asleep. Forde then asked for a match and the woman pushed a box out of the window. He lit a cigarette and looked in at the window as lie did so, before leaving. He had several previous convictions.

The accused said that he had committed the offence in all innocence. After he escaped arrest he went to . the Waikanae Beach for a few hours’ sleep, and then felt the desire for a cigarette. He had seen a light in a house and thought there would be no harm in going in and asking for a match. He admitted that his previLous convictions had been caused through drink. v “We view this matter with concern,” said the Bench, extending the present prison term by a week.