AN HABITUAL CRIMINAL

NZ Truth, Issue 127, 23 November 1907, Page 5

AN HABITUAL CRIMINAL

Condemned to Compulsory Honesty.

William James Webster, who was sentenced to two years' gaol and declared an habitual criminal by Judge Cooper on Monday, has made crime a normal occupation and lived an unnatural existence when condemned to compulsory honesty. Like the unusual individual whose post-mortem-ed body was found to have all the left side organs on the right-side and the right-side organs on the left side, Webster's moral comprehension of things is exactly opposite to that of his fellows, and it is a subject of perpetual astonishment to him that his common-place fellow beings don't lift other people's property m the ordinary course of things. This moral obliquity has run Webster, whose real name is Atkinson, into violent conflict with the law for many years. If he were a rich person he would be called a kleptomaniac and his penchant for- other people's property would be regarded as a harmless idiosyncrasy, but

ATKINSON LIVED TO STEAL, and also stole to live, and his name got on to the prison records m a numerous manner. His experiences included eighteen months' quod m 1894 for breaking and entering ; three years for breaking gaol m the same year ; another three months for escaping from custody m the same year, and yet ' another three years' for breaking and entering at Palmerston on February 11, 1904. Prior to this, m 1901, he had a flutter at Adelaide, where he sampled gaol for 3 years on two charges of breaking and entering. His disastrous New Zealand experiences led him to go to Perth m 1896, but he denied going up there for larceny, unlawful possession, and escaping from custody. Atkinson came over to New Xealand and was working peaceably m the King Country, when he had the misfortune to be discharged from toil and planted m Taihape with £15 m his possession. The glorious time experienced m the sly-grog centre aroused the sleeping devil of illegal acquisitiveness, and Atkinson broke ii.to places at Wincata and Hunterville while m a state- of beer. He has certainly had a strenuous career.