A PREY ON SOCIETY.

Taranaki Daily News, 21 May 1921, Page 6

A PREY ON SOCIETY.

BOGUS CLERGYMAN SENTENCED. THREE YEARS’ IMPRISONMENT. Three years’ imprisonment was the sentence passed by Mr. Justice Stringer at the Auckland Supreme Court the other day upon Claude Osmonde Barker (Mr. J. F. W. Dickson), the bogus clergyman who admitted that he cashed several valueless cheques in Auckland last Easter, and who also attempted to obtain a motor car valued at £925 and other goods by false pretences. The facts of the case were that the prisoner visited various local businesses attired as a clergyman. In his various transactions he produced a visiting card inscribed. “Rev. W’. F. Don, M.A.” Dr. Dickson said the reason for the crime was probably a sudden mental abberation on the part of the prisoner. He had previous convictions, and had only recently been allowed out on probation. In Christchurch he had been in business, but men whom he had met in prison kept visiting him, and that had had a bail effect on him. He had conceived tliis get-rich-quick scheme in order to get married. The only point counsel could really raise was the accused’s youth. His Honor: You can hardly cal,! him a youth. He is 26 years of agft. In 1'912 he was convicted of theft, and was ordered to come up for sentence when called upon. That was lenient treatment. In 1915 he was convicted again, and received twelve months’ hard labor with five reformative treatment. After serving that sentence, and four years of the reformative treatment, he came out and committed |his most carefully prepared and impudent fraud on a variety of people, discarding the business in Christchurch in which he could have made an honest living. Bis*Honor added that he - ' not see any mitigating circumstances, not even that he had served his couutJ’y at the war. Mr. Dickson: He was in custody. 11 is lhnor : Probably he served it in another way. The accused: I volunteered whilst J was in gaol. ' His Honor: Judging by your record T should think it was a pity you had not gone. You might at least have died in the service of your country. As it is yon seem to have resolved to prey on society. Mr. V. R. Meredith, the Crown Prosecutor, mentioned that the accused possessed loaded firearms for the purpose of carrying out the “stunt.”

His Honor, addressing the prisoner said: “I can only conclude you have deliberately -determined to follow criminal practices. That being so I must put yon out of the way of doing so for a considerable term of imprisonment. Reformative treatment is useless in your case. You are sentenced to three years’ imprisonment.