A MEMORY ORIENTATED

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 62, 13 March 1919, Page 6

A MEMORY ORIENTATED

AND A MAN WHO WAS BOBBED. INCIDENT ON WATERFRONT. FRONT, A man who had lost his memory, and also his watch and chain, on Tuesday evening presented the wateriront police yesterday with a problem which was successfully solved by Plain-clqthes Constable Gourley. The complainant said he remembered having throe drinks in an hotel on Tuesday afternoon, aD<! then things became a blurred blank, so far as hie memory was eonaerned. until he woke up in a tramear late in the evening with his watch and chain gone. The constable, in a quandary, conceived the idea of trying to orientate the man's confused memory by taking him into the hotel where the atmosphere and surroundings would be likely to suggest events of the night before, and he found that on being brought from the bar to the street the man instinctively turned along the street to the waterfront, and then he recollected having been in th» company the night before of men whom he judged to be eailors or firemen. Acting on this hint, and wise to the waye of seafarers of all kinds, Constable Gourley made inquiries at a pawnshop handy to the wharves, and there found the watch and chain, which had been sold for 25/. He then preceded to comb out the 6hips at the wharves, and after having been through a couple of them, he got information on the steamer War Opal, which resulted in the arrest, of two firemen and a seaman in the afternoon. After arrest the men admitted the theft. They were James Barker (23), George E. Crangle (24), and John Raine (28), and their story was that the complainant, Alexander Allen, had got in tow with some members of the ship ashore, and had gone aboard with them, where he had been hospitably treated. Eventually he left the ship, and lay on the wharf and fell asleep. While he wag there the accused went on the wharf, and took the watch and chain, which was sold by one of them for 25/ to buy drink with. This was the story told before Mr J E. Wilson, S.M., at the Police Court today, and the three accused, who pleaded "guilty," were fined £G each, and ordered to pay 8/4 a-piei-e to repay the pawnbroker. The fine being imposed so that the men might be returned to the ship, which had sailed down the coaet last night.