GIVING HIM A CHANCE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 1388, 20 April 1915, Page 2

GIVING HIM A CHANCE.

“I am going to appeal to yon to show me a little sympathy, and I promise most faithfully I am going to be a different man, and I will never as long as I live drink any more, for this has been a most terrible lesson to me,” This is an extract from the letter of a prisoner, who under promise of reformation, appealed for liberty and a chance to redeem the past. The prisoner was William Sellar, who, having pleaded guilty to charges of breaking and entering and theft in the Hastings district, appeared in the Wellington Supreme Court on Saturday morning to be sentenced. The Crown Soiicitor tMr H. H. Ostler) informed the Court that Sellar was twenty-seven years of age, a native of Scotland, and that he bad been some little time in New Zealand. Twice drink had led to his being convicted in a Magistrate’s Court. Recently Sellar had been working for Maoris in the Hastings district. The police said that he was not a criminal really, but that he did wrong under tire influence of

drink. Mr Ostler read this letter which the prisoner had sent to Detective Butler, of Hastings ■; —“I have now come to my senses, and I can see that drink is making such a beast of me, and bringing such terrible shame as this on me. I don’t want to cause you any further trouble, and I would like to let you know that I am guilty, although I have very little remembrance as to the awful, mad act I did. lam sorry I put you to unnecessary trouble, but I was still under intoxication when you came for me, Mr Butler, I am going to appeal to you to show me a little sympathy, and I promise you faithfully I am going to be a different man, and I will never as long as I live drink any more, for this has been a most terrible lesson to me. If you will try to do something for me, 1 promise you you will never regret it, for I am in real earnest, and I mean it. Hoping you will try your best for me, for I am not a criminal at heart, and it is drink that has brought this shame on me.” Mr Justice Chapman, who presided in the Court, said that the case was one in which the prisoner should have a chance, but he pointed out that if Sellar took liquor he would find himself in trouble. “Are you willing,”' he asked the young man in the dock, “to undertake as part of the probation that you take no intoxicating liquor ?” Prisoner: “Yes, sir.”

Sellar was then admitted to probation for twelve months, on the conditions that he did not touch liquor, and paid, by monthly instalments. .£5 towards making restitution for the damage he had done. If the police found him drinking, he would forfeit his probation.