AN EXTRAORDINARY CASE.

Taranaki Daily News, 30 August 1921, Page 3

AN EXTRAORDINARY CASE.

YOUNG MAN STEALS '£2033. A Christchurch message on Saturday, stated that Patrick John Butler, a young man, aged twenty years, who pleaded guilty to stealing £2033 4s lid from the Christchurch office of the State Coal Depot, was sentenced to two years’ reformative treatment. Mr. M. J. Gresson, accused’s counsel, said the offence was committed with extraordinary motive. The prisoner was brought up in the country. When he left school at sixteen years, his father, unwisely, but with the best intentions, urged him to find employment in town, and he entered the Christchurch office of the State Coal Department. He stayed there four years. All that time he was eating his heart out to get back to the country. He asked his father to let him back, but his father thought it was wiser that he should stay in Christchurch. He had no vices. He neither drank nor gambled. As a junior he was placed in charge of the receiving machine in the office. It recorded the half yearly totals along a line on top of the machine. He saw the auditor turn the recorder back ■to zero. The machine was supposed to be rogue-proof and could not be turned back to a smaller sum, but could *be turned back to zero. The temptation then assailed him. He* thought. “Now’s my chance to get back into the country.” He took a large sum, but the extraordinary part of it was that he spent not a single penny. He paid the whole into the Post Office Savings Bank. All had been returned. The only motive was to get back to the country. He received a salary of only £l2O a year, and £60,000 a year passed through his hands. He had been trusted on account of his character, and he fell, and having entered upon a downward course it was impossible for him to pay any of the money back without inevitable discovery. The Crown representative said the report of the Under-Secretary of Mines bore out what Mr. Gresson had said in regard to previous character.