£10,000 FRAUDS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 December 1938, Page 7

£10,000 FRAUDS

WOMAN STOCKBROKER. Sentence of four years’ penal servitude was passed at Manchester Assizes m Adela Taylor, aged 40, sharebroker, of Rochdale, who pleaded guilty to fraudulent conversion of clients’ money amounting to £10,171. Mr Justice Croom-Johnson, passing sentence, said: “I am old-fashioned enough to think that some allowance ought to be made for a woman, and I am making that allowance in your case.” Mr F. E. Pritchard, K.C., prosecuting, said that after the illness of her uncle, Mr Enoch Dawson, a Rochdale stockbroker. Taylor, from 1920 onwards appeared to have complete control of the business. Her uncle died in December, 1937. At the date of his bankruptcy, m November, 1937, her indebtedness to lhe firm was £84,267. There were 88 unsecured creditors of the firm to the extent of £58.826. Of that sum £40.895 represented money paid by clients for stocks and shares which they never received. Mr T. Heywood, for Taylor, sub--1 milted that the conversions were due to a spontaneous act on a mad impulse. None of the money had gone on her own tastes.