OFFICER'S BROKEN TRUST.

Auckland Star, Volume LII, Issue 25, 29 January 1921, Page 10

OFFICER'S BROKEN TRUST.

A STOLEN LETTER. (By Telegraph.—Press Association.) CHRISTCHURCH, Friday. '•'Every person in the Post and Telegraph Department is in a position of trust, and under great responsibility. The public would not have faith in public institutions if persons who stole letters were free to do that sort of thing without punishment." These remarks were made by Mr. Justice Herdman in the Supreme Court to-day in sentencing Adam Morrison Rattray, a postal employee, to three months' imprisonment, with hard labour, for the ihcft of a letter containing £5. In extenuation, Mr. Alpers submitted that Rattray had already been punished by heavy monetary loss. In three years he was to retire from the service with a pension of £215 per annum. He had been dismissed from the service, and« had made a sorry mess of his otherwise unblemished career. Prisoner had been a volunteer officer in Canterbury for 25 years. He received a salary' of £320 a year, and was under no financial stress. He was occasionally addicted to drink, and in one of his lapses he yielded to the temptation to steal a letter which he knew contained, £5.

His Honor, in sentencing prisoner, said the case was a pit.iabjk one, and he would extend the benefits of the Probation Act to Rattray if he could. His age and service record would be taken into account.