LIKE JOHN SILVER.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 155, 4 July 1927, Page 3

LIKE JOHN SILVER.

ONE-LEGGED MAN IN DOCK.

ANOTHER IK WITNESS BOX. WHISKY PARTY ENDS IX COURT. Four men and three bottles of whisky consumed in a right-of-way off Nelson Street, a one-legged man with a crutch, a scowl on his face, and not an eye, but a hand in a bandage, and a story of robbery with some violence and a waved crutch. It looked and sounded rather like Stevenson, "Fifteen men on the dead man's chest," and John Silver. But it was nothing so romantic. Onlv a Sunday morning drinking partv, with apparently sly grog at a pound a bottle and no change, and the wind-up was a charge of robbing the man who paid for the liquor, the booty being six pounds in notes. Oddly enough, when the informant was called at the Police Court this morning to tell his story to Mr. W. R. McKean, S.M., he also was seen to be minus a limb, only he used a wooden one instead of a crutch. The "John Silver" of the story was Thomas McFadden, aged 49 years. According to the story elicited by Senior Sergeant Edwards, a man named David O'Connell started out from home on Sunday, June 26, paid a couple of accounts in Grey Street, wandered over the Civic Square, and then up to the corner of Nelson and Victoria Streets, where he met three other men. One of them was McFadden, and he was the only one O'Connell was acquainted with. After some greetings, O'Connell suggested a bottle of whisky, and when he produced a pound note, McFadden undertook to produce the bottle. "No," said O'Connell to the senior sergeant, "there was no change." Remembered Very Little. The quartet adjourned to a little right-of-way, a bit along Nelson Street, and there drank the bottle. Apparently this only whetted their appetite, for O'Connell produced another pound and McFadden produced another bottle—the place of origin not being stated in Court, O'Connell remembered these two bottles, and then he remembered a fall, after which he remembered very little, he told the Court, But he was minus his money when he recovered. Other people, who happened to be on the verandah of a neighbouring house in Nelson Street, carried the story further. They accounted for three bottles, and they said McFadden did not "drink fair," missing his turn frequently. The party started about ten, and went on until dinner time, when the revellers were decidedly noisy, they used "language" and started to quarrel. These onlookers told how McFadden had rummaged O'Connell's pockets when he dropped down, and abstracted a roll of notes. When arrested shortly afterwards, McFadden was found in possession of six notes, though when it was a question of paying for the whisky (so O'Connell said) the others pleaded they were not in funds, and that was why he "shouted." "Did I Insult Ye?" McFadden was something of a trial to the Court, as he professed not to understand the nature of asking questions of the witnesses. "Did I insult ye, Davie 1" he at last asked the informant, after a rambling story about being under the influence of liquor, and so on. Then when one of the men on the verandah gave an exact account of the whole debauch, the quarrel and the alleged robbery, McFadden turned away with disgust and said, "I dinna ken this man at all; but he's telling a pack of lies!" After hearing a number of witnesses, the Court committed McFadden for trial, and in the meantime he emphatically pleaded not guilty.