COTTAGE OF PLUNDER.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIV, Issue 9338, 6 January 1909, Page 6

COTTAGE OF PLUNDER.

DIVORCED WIFE fGETS NEW TROUSSEAU BY FRAUD, Sentence of twelve months* imprisonment in the second division was passed on Mabel Carroll, an adventuress, who bad victimised many firms in Bond Street and Regent Street, at the Newington Sessions. The prisoner, a pale-faced woman of thirty-two, with curly brown hair and brown eyes, in pleading not guilty at the last sessions, admitted having written for and received the goods referred to, but denied that she had any intention to defraud. In prosecuting, Mr George Elliott said that the woman was the divorced wife of Major Carroll. The story of the frauds began last year when a man calling himself “Major Thompson” took a picturesque cottage at Olavering, Essex, where he was joined by two women—one said to be his wife and the other the prisoner, who was represented to be Mrs Boileau, Jwife of a colonel of the Royal Artillery. Goods were sent by West End firms to the cottage. One day the three left—apparently to take a trip to town. They never returned. The maid waited in vain for them; they forgot, too, another item—the payment of the rent. The prisoner was a woman of education and of culture and refinement, and by reason of her position and intelligence was able to join with other persons in a common design to defraud West End tradespeople. After her arrest it is alleged the prisoner said: “I am going to take the responsibility for the whole lot of things sent from London to Olavering in the names of Boileau and Thompson. I do that to save your time. ” Mr Owen Thomas, of Gloucester Terrace, Regent’s Park, proved that the cottage was let furnished at £1 a week. Mr Wallace, K. 0.: We all know these week-end cottages. Mr Elliott: Yes. They are very nice to stay at sometimes, and sometimes they are to get away. from. Mrs Boileau, Wife of LieutenantColonel Arthur Boileau, of the Royal Artillery, said that she and her husband were in Mauritius at the time the goods were ordered. Major Carroll, she said, was in the same regiment as her husband. The prisoner, who refused to go into the witness box, addressed the jury from the dock, and said that two years after her marriage to Major Carroll her husband divorced her. She had married again, and in 1904 became a widow. Afterwards she met a man who, she said, had been the cause of all the evil since. An Australian then made proposals to her. ' ‘ You can’t, ” she said, “marry Without a trousseau. It would be impossible.” But though she had ordered goods in a false name she meant to pay for them.