A BOGUS DOCTOR.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 253, 15 March 1913, Page 6

A BOGUS DOCTOR.

HOW HE WAS FOUND OUT. Auckland, March 11. Dr. Alfred Clark, of Hobsoii's Buildings, Wits considerably mystified, and not a little bit annoyed, during the early days of last month by . receiving calls from strangers who were complete strangers to him, hut who alleged that they had been previously treated by him. He responded to several such calls on the telephone, only to find that the patients on sight repudiated him as the wrong Dr. Clark. They insisted that they were being treated by a Dr. Clark, and seeing that lie was the only Dr. Clark on the telephone list they "had rung him up after they had consulted the medical register a lid satisfied themselves that he was the only Dr. Clark practising. It occurred to' him that his mysterious namesake must be a bogus physician wlio was treating patients under false pretences, and he communicated his suspicion to the police. Detective-Sergeant Cox was given charge of the enquiry, ami he very soon located the bogus 'Dr. Clark." He turned out to be a young man named William Frederick Clark, who was canvassing for patent medicines from house to house and treating complaints, alleging that he made the medicine himself, that be was a medical man named Dr. Clark, and would shortly open a practice in Auckland. The patent medicines he bought from a chemist in Auckland, for which purpose he assumed the name of Capn. The detective-sergeant laid an information against Clark "of wilfully and falsely pretending to ho a practitioner in medicine, and accused appeared before Mr. E.G. Cutten, S.M., this morning and pleaded guilty. Chief-Detective McMahon mentioned that Clark, who is a spectacled youth of 22 years, was in July last put on probation after being convicted of vagrancy, consequent on his living on hoardinghousekeepers by patronising a number of them and always moving on without squaring up. Clark stated that he did not think he was doing any harm to anybody. He was very nearly blind, he said, and he had hit'upon this way of getting the necessary cash to enable him to have his pyi's properly attended to. Since the police 'had seen him he had obtained legitimate employment at 2os a week. The bogus doctor was fined £.">, and ordered to pav it at the rate of 5s a week, in default a month's hard labor.