THEY SHOUTED

NZ Truth, Issue 1174, 31 May 1928, Page 9

THEY SHOUTED

And Two Drinks Were Quite Enough (From "N.Z. Truth's" Auckland Rep.) There was ever something of the psychologist about the average pickpocket. Take, for instance, the . simple ruse which was put into practice by John Reid (28) and David Morgan Leckie (41), when Thomas Miller, cook by occupation, and staying at the Salvation Army Home, joined them m the bar of the United Service Hotel, Auckland. DEID "shouted," then Miller recipro- ** cated. Miller was m the company of strangers, but he was a ready subject to the impertinent overtures of this artful pair — "carrion" for their falcon fingers. Simple enough it sounds; so simple/ m fact, that one wonders how anyone, after two drinks among strangers, would "fall" for the graft. "Let us see how heavy you are?" And without a penny m the slot, Reid adopts the role of weighing-machine. Presto ! And £ 2 cash, pension papers, military pay-book and discharge, the former property of Miller, transferred ownership. When interviewed later at the police station, both Reid and Leckie denied robbing the other man. "Rot. and absolute balderdash!" said Reid, m a statement to Sergeant Angland. "Miller was looking for fight, making himself a pest and some* body hit him m the mouth." Leckie took the trouble to write out his own denial at the police station, evidently with a latent distrust for the force. Twice he was searched at the watchhouse before the stolen property was found by the police. Evidently the searching constable's fingers were not so nimble as those of the arrested men. Magistrate Hunt had no hesitation m entering convictions and asked for previous records. Reid's was a clean sheet, now opened with a term of one month's imprisonment. . But Leckie, a one-armed man, by the way, could show something far more formidable. Beneath previous convictions for vagrancy, theft and assault, was the glaring record of five years for manslaughter at Hamilton, when he t had, as Senior-Sergeant Cummings declared, "hit a. man over the head wilh a bottle." His, sentence was three months.

There is something which everyone needs In the winter- time months of the year, He is wise who that truism heeds, And from ailments has nothing to fear. Epidemics may rage as they will, Bringing bronchial complaints to endure, But all who once take it will still Take Woods' Great Peppermint Cure.*