AN ARISTOCRAT’S FALL.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXII, Issue 8918, 11 September 1907, Page 4

AN ARISTOCRAT’S FALL.

A member of an aristocratic family, named Claude Allen, a welldressed man, had several charges or fraud preferred against him at the Old Bailey, London. He was described as an associate of the cleverest West End thieves who lie in wait for their prey in the lounge bars of fashionable restaurants. Allen was said to be a brother-in-law of Sir George Parrer, the wellknown South African financier, and the police brought a further series of charges of obtaining money from West End tradesmen by means of forged cheques. The evidence ox detectives as to prisoner’s past was that eight years ago he suffered ms first term of imprisonment lor stealing an overcoat. After his release he went to South Africa, but returned to resume his old haunts and habits. One of the cheques gave the clue, according to the police, , to a theft of £6O worth of jewellery - from a dressing case at Paddington station. The cheque-book had been placed among the jewellery stolen. Another cheque he had used the police declared to have been stolen frony-au overcoat at the restaurant. Every effort, counsel asserted, had been put forth by the prisoner’s relatives to reform him and set him on the straight path. Lady Parrer obtained a good situation for him m Rhodesia after Ins first conviction, and, having spent three years as assistant secretary to a mining company he managed a cold storage concern in Delagoa Bay. “But for an attack of malaria,” counsel said, “ he might have completely retrieved his character.” That illness necessitated the resignation of his appointment, and Lady Parrer took him into her own home at Johannesburg to nurse him back to health. Two years ago she sent him home to Loudon, and made him an allowance of £3 a week, which she discontinued for some cause. When prisoner had completed the sentence which the Recorder must pass upon him his mother and Lady Parricr, said counsel, would come to tho rescue again, and set him up in some foreign couutry. The Recorder passed sentence of 18 months’ hard labour.