THEFT CHARGES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 May 1939, Page 4

THEFT CHARGES

YOUNG WOMAN BEFORE COURT IN MASTERTON. “I DID NOT MEAN TO DO IT.” “I did not mean to do it,” said a young woman with a sob, when pleading guilty in the Masterton Magistrate’s Court this morning to three charges of theft preferred against her. Messrs E. G. Eton and R. Krahagen. J’s.P., who convicted the accused and ordered her to come up for sentence if called upon within six months, said she was very fortunate that she' had a lenient bench to deal with the case, and after severely admonishing the accused for her action, expressed the hope that it would be a lesson to her. On the application of the accused her name was suppressed. Accused was charged with the theft, at Masterton, on April 12, 1939, of two bed sheets, valued at 15s '6d, the property of Matilda May McKenzie; at Masterton, on May 29, of four single bed sheets, five pillow cases, three face towels, a bedspread, and a linen table runner, valued at £2 18s 6d, the property of Edith Eliza Groube; and at Wellington, on October 15, 1938, of three bed sheets valued at £1 Is 9d, the property of the Wellington Hospital Board. Senior-Sergeant G. A. Doggett said all the offences were more or less connected. The accused had been employed as a waitress at the Prince of Wales Hotel until the day before yesterday. She had left her luggage there to be called for later. The proprietress, Mrs Groube, noticed that several articles in the main charge were parcelled up amongst accused’s bags, and an examination of this ■parcel showed that the articles had been used by the accused in her quarters. Questioned about them by Constable Hill when she arrived to get the bags at 6.30 o’clock last night the accused said the only reason why she was taking them away was that they had got too badly soiled to be laundered, and she intended to take them away and get them done herself. An inspection of the bags showed that other articles from the Occidental Hotel, where the accused was previously employed, and also three sheets belonging to the Wellington Hospital Board, where the accused was employed as a waitress until October 15 last. Since that time she had been in this district. In each instance she said hei’ intention was to have the articles laundered and returned. The accused, Senior-Sergeant Doggett said, had never previously been before the court. She came from Hamilton, and he understood her parents were dead.