TRUSTS BETRAYED

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 391, 28 November 1932, Page 2

TRUSTS BETRAYED

DISHONEST LAWYERS DEATH UNCOYERS SCANDAL OF RIGIITEOUS MEN WHO RUINED CLIENTS. GLARING CASES REVEALED. Sydney, Saturday. Hardly a week goes by without some dishonest solicitor being struck off the rolls. The sum of their defalcations during 1932- alone runs into £300,000. The latest revelations concern the bankrupt estate of Arthur Bernard Davies, a city solicitor, who took his own life in April last at his Hunter's Hill home, and whose trust funds were short to the tune of £26,000. Th'e Chief Justice (Sir Philip Street) and prominent members of the Incorporated Law Institute, have, on recent occasions commented severely on the) increasing dishonesfy of solicitors in misappropriating trust funds. An examination of the list of defaulting solicitors reveals some astonishing examples of fraud. William Edward Hawkins, aged 69 years, who was sentenced to a year and nine months' imprisonment by Judge Thomson, a few days ago, for misappropriating trust funds, had been practising in Sydney for 46 years, and was a prominent churchman and a leading Shakespearean scholar. Spread over a number of years, Hawkins, according to investigations by detectives had misappropriated £10,000 in trust funds. During his bankruptcy examination, the court was crowded with unfortunate clients whom Hawkins had fleeced, many of them old women, who could ill-afford to lose what he had deprived them of. His methods in the witness-box were those of prevarication and alleged loss of memory as to what he had done with' the money. Was Cabinet Minister. Another glaring instance was revealed in connection with the bankrupt estate of the late Eric Kendall Bowden, also a prominent churchman and a former Minister for Defence, who had he'en practising for 38 years, principally at Parramatta. Many of those who had reposed trust in him are now ruined, for £18,000 of trust funds could not be found. Clegg's Haul. Th'e biggest fraud of all was that committed hy William Carnegie Clegg, another Sydney solicitor, closely identified with church movements and ehurch ' societies. His bankruptcy affairs have not yet been disentangled, for they are in hopeless confusion. Clegg's ddpredations resulted in scores of former clients being ruined. He got away with £200,000! His methods, during examination in bankruptcy, were similar toi those of Hawkins — prevarication and loss of memory. Clegg was sentenced to four years' imprisonment. Another solicitor recently struck off for dishonesty of this nature was Lancelot George Blackmore, who is now serving a sentence.