“Demons Got Wheeze”

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 53, 25 May 1927, Page 1

“Demons Got Wheeze”

JARGON PUZZLES COUNSEL “PULLING” FROM WAREHOUSE (.Special to THE SUN.) CHRISTCHURCH, Tuesday. J AM not well versed in the language of motion pictures,” admitted Mr. C. S. Thomas at the Police Court to-day, when appearing in a case in which a witness used some peculiar jargon.

George Low, a salesman, aged 20, was charged with stealing a pair of pyjamas, valued at 10s, from the Kaiapoi Woollen Company, Ltd. He was represented by Mr. C. S. Thomas, and pleaded not guilty.

The terms which drew comment from Mr. Thomas were contained in the evidence of Mabel Curwin, who said that Low came to her and sold her a pair of pyjamas. Next day he was back again and said that ‘‘the demons had got the wheeze,” that the pyjamas had been ‘‘pulled away” from a warehouse, and that if she would burn them he would give her back the money she had paid for them.

After he had gone, she thought that if she burned them, she would be implicating herself in the theft, so she did not do so, and when a detective called next morning she gave the pyjamas up to him. Later Low came back again, and said that it was : quite all right. He

thought that the pyjamas had been “pulled,” but they were not. “Did you give them to the demons?” he asked, and on witness replying that she had done so, he said, "Yes, I picked you would.” Mr. Thomas said that he was not well versed in the language of the motion pictures, from which all this about “demons getting the wheeze,” and so on evidently, was borrowed. Low, who had been in trouble since the age of 14, has been convicted of many thefts, and served a long term of reformative treatment. He is engaged to the witness Curwin’s sister, and his counsel stated that he sold the stolen pyjamas to her for a quarter of their value in order to make his marble good. He was remanded pending a report from the probation officer.