THE GOOD SAMARITAN

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 23, 19 April 1927, Page 9

THE GOOD SAMARITAN

SUSPECTED OF THEFT CHARGES DISMISSED Sometimes it doesn’t pay to play the Good Samaritan. Frederick Molen, chief cook of the steamer Kartigi, listened to a story of no work, no money, starving family, and so forth, from an old seaman whom he found fishing off King’s Wharf. His heart was touched and he went back aboard, packed up a handbag with various provisions, and left it in his cabin ready for the old man next time he hove in sight. Then he went off to have a bath. Fate has a habit of playing strange tricks. While Molen was carolling lustily among the soap bubbles, who should come along to his cabin but Harold Glover, a former member of the crew, whom he had asked to replenish the beer supply from the “beach.” Another handbag of empty “riggers” stood in the corner. Glover picked up the wrong bag and walked off ashore with it. At the wharf gates the patrol officer, Frank Penrose, was anxious to know what was in the bag. On opening it he found it full of foodstuffs and taking Glover for a thief took him along to the wharf police. Their story was told in the Police Court this morning when both Molen and Glover were charged with stealing the stores. “Well, I’ve got a doubt about it,” said the magistrate, Mr. Hunt, after hearing both sides, and he dismissed the charge against the two men.