PERIL AND LUXURY

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 43, 13 May 1927, Page 1

PERIL AND LUXURY

MAN’S STRANGE WANDERINGS ASTONISHING STORY FROM DUNEDIN HOW a fugitive from justice lived for four months was revealed in the Dunedin Police Court when Arthur G. Penny pleaded guilty to 24 charges of breaking and entering and theft. Some of the time was perilous, but for three weeks he lived on champagne and delicacies in a bond store. Meantime his wife had given birth to a child.

Press Association DUNEDIN, To-day. After Arthur G. Renney left home to wander about thieving and sleeping among the hills, his wife had a child to him. Arrested by the police months afterwards, his first question was. “Is it a boy or a girl?” In the Police Court this morning he laced 24 charges of breaking and entering and theft. An astonishing story of his wanderings between Evansdale and Dunedin during the last four months was read in his signed statement. The incentive to breaking into various dwellings and cribs was apparently mainly hunger. Invariably his stay in unoccupied cribs was marked by much feasting.

Rarely did he hinder himself with anything not useful to his wanderings. On one occasion, after breaking into a

crib at St. Leonards, and boarding liimself gratis for two days, he embarked on an old rowboat, and had a rather perilous three-hour voyage down the harbour in the leaky tub to Broad Bay, continuing his wanderings and depredations among the east harbour cribs. Sometimes he was without food for days, sleeping among the lupins. Then some weeks ago he bethought himself of the good things stored in Neill and Company’s bond in the city, and made entry thereto living heartily on tinned delicacies, champagne, etc., hiding by day among the rafters. Often during his lonely wanderings he sat in the scrub above Ravensbourne, watching his former home, where his wife and baby lived. The latter was born after he quitted home for the hills.

Renney pleaded guilty to all charges and was committed for sentence.