THEFT OF A POSTAL NOTE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 851, 11 June 1910, Page 3

THEFT OF A POSTAL NOTE.

NINE MONTHS’ IMPRISONMENT. In the Supreme Court at Wanganui this week, Judge Edwards, in sentencing a youth named Beattie for the theft of a postal note from Marton Post Office, said that from the time of the passing of the First Offenders’ Probation Act be had intimated that in no circumstances would postal officials convicted of stealing letters passing through the post office be admitted to probation. Such thefts might have aud did have an effect far beyond that attaching to the stealing of money under ordinary circumstances. A postal official who stole a letter passing from a husband to his wife might by his act drive the woman into the arms of another man. In this country, where so many men had to seek the maintenance of themselves and their families in remote country districts aud where the breadwinners bad to remit to their wives and tamilies the sum they earned, it might follow that if letters containing such remittances were stolen in the post office a wife might be driven into the arms of another man. Indeed, families might be broken up aud lives endangered by such thefts. In such cases it was absolutely essential that correspondence passing through the post office must be kept sacred. In the present case, said his Honour, prisoner had shown every indication of callousness aud inhumanity. He had stolen a letter contaning £i, which an old woman tottering on the verge of her grave had sent to her sou who had been the victim of an accident. Knowing this he took the paltry sum and kept it for some months, and then devoted it to the purposes of gambling. His Honour said he would give full effect to the recommendation of the jury for leniency, and sentenced accused to nine months’ imprisonment with hard labour.