GAOL FOR SOLICITOR

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 607, 8 March 1929, Page 1

GAOL FOR SOLICITOR

BATCHELOR SENTENCED THEFT OF CLIENTS’ MONEY CHRISTCHURCH. To-day. JN the Supreme Court to-day Mr. Justice Adams sentenced John Black Batchelor, a former Christchurch solicitor, who was arrested in Melbourne and brought back to New Zealand, to two years’ reformative detention on charges of the theft of £1,200, his clients’ money, Couuscl tor Batcliclor said that perhaps the true explanation of the terrible calamity that had befallen this young man was that he had commenced in practice as a mere youth of 21, within a few months of qualifying in his profession. Later on he was forced into crime by a combination of Circumstances. The Crown Prosecutor, Mr. A. T. Donnelly, said that Batchelor started in practice with small qualifications—except for a good deal of ignorance, inexperience, and personal conceit. His affairs became muddled, and he entered upon a course of dishonesty, which continued uninterruptedly from 1924 until the time when he ran away. “Counsel talks of the conscience of the accused,” said Mr. Donnelly, “but there is no sign of it, not even in the statement he made out on the boat.”

The judge said Batchelor’s example would have a most serious effect on the reputations of those carrying on tlieir business in a perfectly honourable way. It would bring on these trustworthy and honourable people undeserved suspicion and distrust. Persons least able to lose their money were most easy victims.. It was time that, as a result of the discovery of the facts, prisoner was struck off the roll of a most honourable profession, and one to which he ought never have belonged. A man who entered upon the practice of such an honourable and learned profession ought to have known better than to be guilty of fraud.