FORGED WILLS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 October 1938, Page 7

FORGED WILLS

OLD FOLK DEFRAUDED. TOWN COUNCILLOR'S CRIMES "News of the sentence came as a terrible blow to his wife." This statement was made by a relative of Frederick Preston, 51-year-old accountant, of Scarborough, Yorkshire, and town councillor, who was starting to serve a sentence of five years’ penal servitude. Preston, the father of five children, is well known in Scarborough, and sat on the council as an independent member. He was found guilty by a jury at Leeds Assizes of forging and uttering wills relating to six old people, and also of converting money belonging to them, the total proceeds of his offences being fixed by prosecuting counsel as between £2,000 and £3.000. “You have been convicted of verywicked and cruel frauds," Mr Justice Atkinson told Preston. "When one thinks of these old people being robbed in the way you have robbed them, one hardly knows how to find words strong enough to describe your conduct.” The jury’s verdict was a sequel to a four days’ trial, and the case for the prosecution, as outlined by Mr C. PaleyScot, K.C., related to a family named Hicks, or Scarborough. The forged wills concerned William Henry Hicks, an octogenarian, and his three spinster sisters, Annie and Rosa —both dead —and Margaret, and also wills of an old retainer of the Hicks family, Miss Ellen Dinsdale, and of a Scarborough boarding house keeper, Mrs Annie Winifred Broughton. Preston was a beneficiary under the wills, but the testators had stated that they never intended to make him their heir. In one case, Mr Scott stated, Preston made himself the sole legatee under the "will of one woman member of the family, but the supposed testatrix did not even know Preston and had never se'en him. DOCUMENTS IN SAFE. Mr Scott also alleged that Preston was “actually sitting in his office, with forged wills in the safe, just waiting for other elderly members of the Hicks family to die, so that he could inherit more money,” when the police came on the scene. In the witness box Preston declared that, at the request of Mr William Henry Hicks, he gave advice to members of the family about their wills, and they wrote out fresh wills. “All of them,” declared Preston, “made their wills in my favour, and not a bit of influence' was used by me on any of these people.” “What would have happened to the last survivor of this family?” asked Mr Scott in cross-examination. “Supposing it had been the sister, old and bedridden. She would have been destitue, and all the property would have been yours?” “These people knew what they were doing,” replied Preston. Preston was found guilty on 19 of 20 counts, and he left the dock with bowed head.