“LIKE A NOVEL”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 May 1938, Page 5

“LIKE A NOVEL”

STORY TOLD TO -COURT.

DEMAND FOR PAYMENT. “Will you please give the bearer some of the money you owe, or the boss will take proceedings against. I am only warning you for your own good.” This formed part of a letter alleged to have been sent by a 15-ycar-old boy to a Glasgow woman to whom he had sold goods stolen from his employers. Before the stipendiary at Glasgow the lad admitted the charge of theft and was placed on three year's probation —the maximurh period. Mr J. F. Langmuir, prosecuting, related that a woman called on a firm in the city and asked for further time to pay an account which she said was due, but no trace of the account could be found in the firm’s books.

She stated the boy had supplied her with goods, and when she fell behind with her payments he told her his employer was about to take proceedings against her. A few days before, the boy had been dismissed, as it was suspected he was stealing. Apparently the woman had been selling the goods to other people thinking they were honestly obtained by the lad as a salesman on behalf of his firm. He had told her he was getting commission of a shilling in the pound on sales.

Mr Langmuir added the bay was reported “of poor intelligence and physique.” Stipendiary Smith: It sounds like a regular novel. The lad's father said the letter was written by another member of the family.

When the boy was dismissed they thought the money Was genuinely owing to his employers,, and they wanted to get everything “squared up.”