"COUNT" GOES TO GAOL

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 55, 27 November 1937, Page 11

"COUNT" GOES TO GAOL

Turned Out to be Plain Mr. Jackson false-pretences charge • 'A man who clauned to he Count de, la Peld was at Truro (England) sent to prison for a month for obtaining goods jto the value of £7 17s by false pre(tences. His name was given as Barry Shafto Jackson, aged'25. Mr. E. L. Prank, prosecuting, said 'that on ' June 26 Jackson went to a Truro shop and said he was Count de la Peld and wanted to open an account as he and his wife, the countess, were staying at Mount Hawke. Inquiries wero made, and instead oi being the Count de la Peld, the man was found to be plain Jackson. Mr. Prank said that Jackson, when arrested at a Bristol hotel, produced a passpoit bearing tha name E. D. Beaumont.

Detective-Sergeant Rudge, of Bristol, said that he found in Jackson 's room at the hotel visiting .cards inscnbed, "Eev. Viscount and Viscounteas Beaumont, of Detroit, Michigan." He also found a sheet of paper on which was written the following obituary notice: "De la Peld. On August 24, 1937. In a motor accident near Avignon, Barry and Doreen, Count and Countess de la Feld. " ' Jackson said in Court that he was • born as' Barry Shafto Roche Jackson; * he claimed the right to call himself Count de la Peld, because his father'S grandmother was the last of the house ' of de la Feld. They had a title bestowed by the^ Popo 'and 'he and his father were the' ! diTect descendants. i Mr. Frank: You claim the title as well as your father? — Certainly. Pathei and son can both use it with different Christian names. Jaekson agreed that he and liis motber had been employed a3 houseboy and cook at a joint wage of £85 a year, and that .he had also been a butler. He admitted that he had on a number of oecasions given wrong names. He posed as a Eoman Catholic priest as a "trick to get our names in the paper." SuDt. Osborne said that Jackson was born at Dunsmore, Bucks, in 1913, and his mother was a housekeeper in Bayswater. ....