GUNTER AGAIN

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 724, 25 July 1929, Page 6

GUNTER AGAIN

SENTENCED TO TERM OF IMPRISONMENT FURTHER LONDON EXPLOITS Well-known to Aucklanders, Robert William Gunter, alias “Sir” Robert Gunter, one of the greatest confidence tricksters of the time, was sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment in London on July 16. “Sir” Robert will lead a very secluded life for a year. Well educated and wearing an air of aristocratic distinction, Robert William Gunter is recognised in London clubland, and by the police of three different countries, as one of the most daring and skilful of con fidence men, with a long trail of victims behind him. One of his latest escapades was to impersonate Mr. D. B. Wyndham Lewis, a noted English humorist, and he received his sentence of 12 months for stealing from Malcolm Keen, actor. Educated at Cambridge, Gunter was court-martialled in 1914, when he was an officer in the Army Service Corps, for wearing decorations, including the V.C., to which he was not entitled. He joined the Canadian forces and became a sergeant-major, and after the war lived with and impersonated titled people and military officers. Once he impersonated Sir Alan Cobham and ordered wine valued at £I,OOO. While Gunter was impersonating Wyndham Lewis, one of the “Daily Mail’s” contributors, the “Daily Mail” was warning the public against Gunter, under the title of “Scarface.” Gunter has also impersonated the famous airmen, Captain Frank K. Courtney and Commander Samson? Perhaps his most famous hoax, however, was when he presented himself to Graham White at the Hendon airdrome, posing as "Lord Stanton” and introducing a German clerk as the Crown Prince of .Wurtemburg. They were both given a free flight after which Gunter entertained a large party, including a countess, who later took a drive with Gunter in a borrowed Rolls-Royce motor-car. Gunter perpetrated several hoaxes while in New Zealand. In April, 1927, he was sentenced to a term of imprisonment in Mount Eden gaol for obtaining money by falsely representing that he was Surgeon-Commander Joy, of the Royal Navy. After being released he had only a week’s freedom before being arrested again on a charge of vagrancy. It was said he had been posing as “Mr. Selfridge,” of Selfridge’s, London, but the magistrate gave him a chance and ordered him to come up for sentence if called upon. Gunter then approached the tramway authorities and talked about trams and omnibuses like an expert. A few days later he left for Sydney by the Marama, and a cablegram from Sydney related an interview with him in which he discussed the future of tramways and buses, describing himself as “consulting engineer to the London General Omnibus Company.” In his early career in Auckland Gunter stayed at several hotels under false names, including that of “Sir Robert Gunter, of White’s Club, London.”