BAUME AND SMITH GET REFORMATIVE TREATMENT.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 2996, 9 February 1926, Page 2

BAUME AND SMITH GET REFORMATIVE TREATMENT.

Wellington, February, 8.

The case of fraud' on the Post Office Savings Bank, whereof Baume, a low clerk, and Smithy a labourer, succeeded in securing £llOO concluded on Saturday evening. The jury after a retirement of several hours returned a verdict of guilty against both prisoners. In sentencing Baume and Smith His Honour said they had been found guilty of a very grave fraud, a very clever fraud, and, he was bound to say, a very impudent fraud. He regretted to see a young man, with perhaps a brilliant career before him who to some extent, has made a wreck of it. When Baume met Smith the first befriended him. He believed the younger man actuated by generosity and kindly motives, that later there entered into his business mind that here was means to do this fraud to appease his vanity rather than his cupidity. Although Baume had committed a grave crime, he had committed a graver one in Ilis Honour’s opinion. The crime of fraud on Baume’s part was less than the crime he committed in the witness-box, where he had fenced with counsel, sometimes with diabolical cleverness, and was most ungenerous to his confederate. It was well that Baume had been convicted, for, with his facile self evasion if he had not been checked at the out set he might have come to a bad end. The crime was the result of sudden temptation, but showed a definite criminal tendency, which he and society must be protected from. The fact that he was mixing in with the honourable men of his profession all went to show his crime was all the" worse on that account. He would not be sent to ordinary prison where he might be debauched by the ordinary rough and less intelligent type of criminal. His duty was to separate him from his fellows for a period. They were stranded and cast on (lie rocks, but could retrieve themselves. Baume was sentenced to three years in the Borstal Institute. Smith, who was too old for that, was ordered to undergo one year’s reformative treatment.