TUTORED IN CRIME

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 252, 14 January 1928, Page 5

TUTORED IN CRIME

BOY PUPIL OF “JIM THE PENMAN” SUICIDE IN CELL Behind the suicide in his cell at Pentonville Prison of William Hunt, who, only two days previously, had been sentenced to two years’ hard labour, lies a lamentable story of a boy, the son of eminently respectable parents, who was led by evil associates into a long career of crime. Hunt, who was 50 years old, had been sentenced at Middlesex Sessions for stealing from the proprietor of a cycle shop at Hillington. Seventeen previous convictions for fraud and forgery were proved against him. He ended a life of crime by hanging himself. Hunt, a man of small stature, was always well dressed. As a boy he received a good education, and his parents apprenticed him to a Birmingham butcher. He ran straight ' until he was 20 years of age, and then, “broken,” as he professed, by a love affair, went to Leeds, where he started a life of crime. While in gaol he met an older man, a skilled forger, who was said by the police to have rivalled the exploits of James Seward, who has a place in criminal history under the title of “Jim the Penman.” Hunt and his companion combined in the business of forging cheques in the names of local tradesmen. _-For a while they were successful, but at length the frauds were discovered. The older rascal escaped, but Hunt was captured and sent doWn on three sentences of 12 months. After this Hunt worked on his own, but he was not equal to his tutor, and, being arrested for a peculiarly clumsy imitation of a signature in Canterbury, was sent back to gaol. Then he found himself in the grip of his black record. He appears at this period to have married a woman who endeavoured to reform him. She was passionately fond of him, but he could not run straight. He wandered all over the countryside, and was constantly in and out \ of gaol till his last conviction,