RICH WOMAN .DUPED.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 224, 21 September 1929, Page 3 (Supplement)

RICH WOMAN .DUPED.

SECRETARY WHO ROBBED FOR YEARS. The trial was concluded at the Old Bailey recently of Robert John Hodges, aged 41, a secretary, who was indicted for the fraudulent conversion of money entrusted to hiin by his employer, Miss Oriana Juan it a Mary Rose, of Hampton Hill, Middlesex. MiBS Rose, who is 65, stated that she inherited £40.000 from her mother. She employed Hodges as her secretary as he had met with misfortune, and she had trusted him with the management of her property. _ ~ • , Detective Sergeant Gimblett said that during the six and a-half years Hodges had been with Miss Rose she had lost about £9000. A large amount of correspondence addressed to her, some of it going back to 1924, had been found unopened at his house. Mr. C. Humphreys, defending, said that when Hodges entered Miss Rose's service he was penniless, having been robbed of a large sum of money while in business. With cheque books and cash left about by this wealthy and rather eccentric woman he succumbed to temptations. The Common Sergeant, Sir Henry Dickens, said it was clear that Hodges had been bleeding Miss Rose for years, and he would 'be sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment in the second division.