BEGGING LETTER ROGUE

Grey River Argus, 13 April 1911, Page 3

BEGGING LETTER ROGUE

"MOT A GREATER RASCAL i<N

ENGLAND"

"There is probably no cleverer man in the Court at this moment than you, and probably in the whole ot England not a greater rascal," said Judge Rentoul at the Old Bailey to a begging--letter imposter named Frank Whittington, aged 33.

The prisoner used twenty-nine different addresses, in London fro which, to carry on his operations, writing from each one in a different name. Lady Warwick, Lord Kinnaird, and Mrs Humphry Ward were among those whom he attempted to victimise, and he obtained £1 each from i he Bishop of London. Rev M. McCarthy, Birmingham, and Mr Warren Pugh, Bayswater.

The sMU displayed by the prisoner said the judge, was something immense. He set himself to find out his victim's weakness, and it was at those weak points that he directed his attack. For instance, to. the Bishop of London he wrote about Oxford in the East End. The Bishop started, Oxford House, and probably was prouder of that institution and its great work than he was of St. Paul's Cathedral.

The next man was .the headmaster of a . school. There was no greater hobby for a headmaster than the success of his old pupils. The terms in which he had drawn up the letter to Mr McCarthy showed with what cleverness he selected the weakest point for attack.

The same rascality was displayed in his letter to a former registrar in the High Courts, and a great temperance worker. How could he have better introduced himself to Mr PugTi -than by posing as a temperance speaker ?

"T have not tried so dastardly a case in my life," added the judge in passing a sentence of eighteen months' hard lab' Our.