A CLEVER SWINDLER.

Tuapeka Times, Volume V, Issue 251, 21 November 1872, Page 5

A CLEVER SWINDLER.

The following is from the Australasian of the 7th ult. :—

A clever but mean swindler, named Henry Spencer, alias " Ihe Swindling Parson," has got his deserts at the luuda of the City Bench. He was charged with being an idle and disorderly person, having no lawful visible mtanu ef support, and evidence was given that he had gone round to hotels and to ihe shops of poor wumn, mukiny a I rifling purchase, putting down a pound, receiving the change, and then protesting that the silver was half a soveieign or five shillings short, and 'bouncing" the man, woman, or child at the counter into giving him the difference over again He thus made one or two pounds .» day. In two hotelß the landlords refused to be bullied, and he went away without the half-sovereigu he had sought to extort, and promising that he should be heard of again. When heard of again he was in custody. A t one hotel he was so jovial that he took the heart of the landlord by storm, and would have get away with half a soverei.n too much had he not overdone the th ng by insisting on being searched.. The landlord then suspecting his customer, took back the h.-ilf -sovereign he had offered, and toldhiin to take legal proceedings foi its recovery it he thought he had bVn cheated. Npi-ncer indignantly left and did not return. The prisi»ner came to the olony in the year 1865 fiom Adelaide, and had been but little out of gaol since, he was released from prison heie in IS7I, and went to New >outh Wales, whure he did a coHple of sentences in Darlinghurst Gaul. He arrived heie afterwards, and was sentenced to a month's imprisonment for stealing a pair of boots &t Emerald Hiil. lie ca.ne out about six weeks ago and had been changing pound notes with profit ever since. He was a young rjiddy-coniplexioued man, well dressed and respectable looking, and bad just the offhand genial manner which wou.d put tradesmen off their guard when combined with a food appearance About half a-dozen shopeepei s (out of a crowd in the Coun ) narrated how they had been taken in by the prisoner, tie was sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment with hard labor.