DOGGED BY ILL=LUCK

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 June 1940, Page 9

DOGGED BY ILL=LUCK

CLERK’S AMAZING RISE AND FALL. The romantic and tragic story of a man who started his career as an eight shilling a week clerk, rose to a £5,000 a year partnership, was appointed a British Consul, and made and lost two fortunes before his health broke down was unfolded at Poole, Dorset, when George William Macauslane, aged 58, of Bournemouth, was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment for obtaining money under false pretences for several women at Broadstone, Wimborne and Bournemouth.

He pleaded guilty to three charges of obtaining orders and payment in advance for silk stockings which were never delivered, and he asked to have six similar cases taken into consideration.

Police Inspector F. Howe told the court that Macauslane had made a statement in which he said that as a young man he joined a Greenock shipping firm as a clerk, became a pursuer on one of their lines to South America and finally rose to a post as shipping manager to a Chile firm at £lOOO per annum.

From 1914 to 1915 he was British Vice-consul and then Consul at Antofagasta. In 1918 he income as a partner in a firm in Santiago was £4OOO to £5OOO per annum. Later he returned to Scotland and lost his money in a slump. Subsequently he went to Porto Rico in connection with a British oil company and acted as Consul there, but lost all his property in a hurricane. In 1926 he had a breakdown of health and had since acted as salesman to a number of firms. It was learned later that Macauslane, who resigned from the Diplomatic and Consular Services in 1930, was a modest man who said very little of his former life of luxury for fear he would be disbelieved. “He was too proud to seek assistance from those he had helped in the past,” said a friend.