ARMED ROBBERY.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 165, 14 July 1928, Page 3 (Supplement)

ARMED ROBBERY.

PAIR OF SCOUNDRELS IMPRISONED

Describing them as a pair of arrant scoundrels, Mr. Justice Humphreys passed smart sentences at Leeds Assizes on John George Drury (20) and Peter Wilson (20), both labourers, who pleaded guilty to grave charges. They admitted a joint charge of housebreaking. Drury also pleaded guilty to armed robbery, and Wilson to a serious offence against a girl. Drury, armed with a stolen revolver, forced a man on the highway near Wakefield to put up his hands under threat to shoot him while he went through his pockets and stole eight shillings. Wilson, at nine o'clock next morning, attacked a young woman school teacher in a park at Wakefield and ran off with her purse. An hour later he knocked down a young woman in a lonely spot and committed an offence on her. Both youths had been convicted previously for thefts and bound over, and Wilson had had several periods of Borstal treatment. Mr. Justice Humphreys, addressing lie prisoners, said: "You are criminals in the

truest sense of the word. It is often said that criminals are made by the inhumanity with _ which they are treated on their first conviction. That cannot be said of either of you. "A Lesson to Other Men." "On you, Drury, I am going to take a course_ that I hope will deter you from repeating your offence of armed robbery, and will be a lesson to other strong, healthy men like you and make them think twice before they resort to such practices. For the armed robbery you will be imprisoned for eighteen months with hard labour and receive twelve stroked of the "cat." On the other charge you will receive eighteen months' hard labour, to rim concurrently."

To Wilson the judge said: "You have been described as a thoroughly worthless fellow. If you were an alder man I would have sent you for such an abominable crime as rape to penal servitude for a very long time. It is a blight upon civilisation that respectable girls cannot walk along country roads without being assaulted by ruffians like' you. For this offence yon will go to penal servitude for three years, and on the other charges to twelve months' hard labour."