GAOL FOR BANKRUPT

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 815, 8 November 1929, Page 11

GAOL FOR BANKRUPT

ATTEMPTED TO BLUFF CREDITORS ELEVEN MONTHS’ HARD Eleven months’ imprisonment with hard labour was the sentence imposed by Mr. Justice Smith in the Supreme Court this morning on Arthur Douglas* Wylie for theft and obtaining credit without disclosing that he was an undischarged bankrupt. Mr. Noble appealed to the judge to take a lenient view of the bankruptcy breaches. He described Wylie as a modern Micawber—waiting for something to turn up—but who had really done nothing dishonest in these transactions. Counsel argued that it was putting too much strain on human nature to expect a man to go round telling everyone he was an undischarged bankrupt. Commenting that prisoner had already served a term of imprisonment for breaches of the Bankruptcy Act in 1920, his Honour said the present charges arose out of that bankruptcy. Prisoner had never applied for his discharge from bankruptcy, which apparently had been unsatisfactory. After some years Wylie had again commenced trading and had unsuccessfully tried to bluff some of his creditors, added the judge. Notwithstanding the weaknesses of human nature, it was the prisoner’s duty to tell the firms he was an undischarged bankrupt.