BOGUS DETECTIVE

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 4, 26 March 1927, Page 10

BOGUS DETECTIVE

“NOT NORMAL” SOUTH AFRICAN VETERAN “You have to call at 135 Carlton Road, Newmarket, as soon as you arrive in town. Mrs. White has made a statement against you which you have to prove. You have to meet Mr. Cummings, who will wait for you.” This most un-detective-like note, left at E. and H. Craig’s stables for a man named Amer, showed just how much a man of law and order Frederick

Charles White, who called himself “Detective White,” really was. When White appeared in the Police Court yesterday. charged w,.n “assuming the designation of a detective,” his counsel, Mr. Bryce Hart, pointed out that White was not by any means normal. About three years ago, while he was a tram-conductor, White fell off the back of a tram on Parnell Rise and injured his head severely. Spirits made him suffer hallucinations, counsel said, one of them being that Amer was going to assault him. The defendant had had an excellent record, having served in the South African War and in the South African Constabulary. He was a tram-con-ductor in Auckland for six or seven

“I* is a pathetic case,” Mr. Hart continued. “There was no idea of personal gain. He knows Detective White well and he is nothing at all like him. I don’t know which of the two would be flattered.” “I don’t know what to do with the man. It’s a peculiar case,” said Mr. McKean, S.M. “It isn’t a case of a man having any criminal instinct. If the man were normal I should impose a substantial penalty.” White was convicted and ordered to come up for sentence within 12 months and to pay £3 8s costs.