POSTAL OFFICIAL'S THEFT.

Auckland Star, Volume XLI, Issue 134, 8 June 1910, Page 5

POSTAL OFFICIAL'S THEFT.

JUDGE EDWARDS' COMMENT. (By Telegraph.—Press Association.) WANGANUI, this day. In the Supreme Court this morning Judge Edwards, in sentencing a postal official named Beattie for the theft of a postal note from the Marton post office, said that from the time of the passing of the First Offenders' Probation. Act, he had intimated that in no circumstances would postal officials convicted of stealing a letter passing through the post office be admitted to probation. Such thefts might have, and did have, an effect far beyond that attaching to stealing money under ordinary circumstances. A postal official who stole a letter passing from husband to wife might, by his act, drive the woman into the arms of another man. In this country, where so many men had to seek the maintenance of themselves and their families in remote country districts, and where the breadwinners had to remit to their wives and families the sums they earned, it might follow that, if a letter containing such remittances were stolen in the post office, the wife might be driven Into the aims of another man. Indeed, families might be broken up, and lives endangered by such thefts. In such eases it was absolutely essential that correspondence passing through the post office must be kept sacred. In. the present case, said his Honor, prisoner had shown every indication of callousness and inhumanity. He had stolen a letter containing £1, which an. old woman, tottering on the verge of her grave, had sent to her son, who had been the victim of an accident. Knowing this, he took the paltry sum, kept it for some months, and then devoted it to purposes of gambling. His Honor said he would give full effect to the recommendation for leniency, and sentenced prisoner to nine months' hard labour.