STOLE FROM DEAD
GRAVEDIGGERS SENTENCED Three Nottingham gravediggers were sentenced at Nottingham for stealing from the dead. James Henry Clews (26), of Enderby Square, and John Thomas Merrin (39), of St. Paul’s Street, Radford, were each sentenced to three-months’ imprisonment for stealing a gold ring valued at £5 from the body of a woman at Wilford Cemetery, and Thomas Arthur Swanwick (21), of Curzon Street, three months’ imprisonment for this offence and another three months, to run consecutively, from an interred coffin containing a corpse. Mr F. W. Tyzack, for Merrin, con♦ended that there was no property and therefore no ownership in a body which had been committed to a grave with the burial rites performed. A man who opened a coffin and took an article from it had not committed an offence. He could be charged with desecration of the grave, but not with stealing. The magistrates rejected the submission.
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Bibliographic details
Ashburton Guardian, Volume 70, Issue 151, 12 April 1950, Page 2
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151STOLE FROM DEAD Ashburton Guardian, Volume 70, Issue 151, 12 April 1950, Page 2
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