A YOUTHFUL BANK ROBBER IN VICTORIA.—THE THEFT OF £2,100.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume III, Issue 316, 16 October 1875, Page 2

A YOUTHFUL BANK ROBBER IN VICTORIA.—THE THEFT OF £2,100.

Thb notes stolen from the Bank of Victoria, amounting in value to £2,100, have been recovered, and the thief has admitted his guilt. The money was missed out of a large sum, which a clerk named Edmund Ghinn, about eighteen years old, and another clerk had to deliver in the course of exchange to other banks on the 24th of last month. The detectives having been informed of the matter, made enquiries, and ascertained from the lads that they called at the National Bank, and afterwards at the Colonial Bank, where it was discovered that three small parcels of notes, value £2,100, Were missing. While they were at the Colonial Bank, Ghinn went out for a few minutes, for the purpose, he said, of posting a letter to liis sister at Bacchus Marsh, and it was found that he had posted such a letter, but that, according to the post-mark on the envelope, it was posted at half-past 11 a.m., and not at half-past 9 a.m., at which hour the lad left the Colonial Bank. He was unable to give any satisfactory explanation as to what he did when he went out at halfpast 9, and this excited suspicion against him. A few days afterwards, however, while the detectives were seeking confirmation of their suspicion against Ghinn, the defalcations of the receiving teller, Sawers, who is now awaiting sentence for embezzlement, were discovered, and this circumstance completely blinded the trail for the time, as the impression was so strong that Sawers had stolen the £2,100 in addition to having embezzled money that all the efforts of the detectives and the bank were directed towards tracing the notes to Sawers. On Wednesday evening, Edmund Ghinn’s sister noticed that her brother .had a quantity of new clothes wh’ch he could not have obtained in the ordinary way, and she mentioned this to her father who examined the lad. Young Ghinn, however was so unsatisfactory in his explanation that his father opened the Lad’s box, and there he found £1,600 in bank notes. He took the boy to Mr. Mathison, the general manager of the Bank of Victoria, and to him, in the presence of his father and two other gentlemen, the youth admitted that the notes found were part of the stolen notes and that he had effected the robbery himself. Sergeant Holmes, who was sent for, arrested the culprit, and found upon him £64 19s lOd making the total amount recovered, £1,664 9s lOd out of the £2,100 stolen. —Auckland Star.