"WORST MEMBER."

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 290, 8 December 1932, Page 7

"WORST MEMBER."

SYDNEY UNDERWORLD ASSAULT OF A WARDER. POLICE OFFICER'S STORY. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, November 21. In the literature of the Wild West and the "movies" thc-reunto appertaining a "bad man" is not simply a criminal, or a person whose moral code is below the average, but the type of "killer" who shoots on sight for a trivial pretext or for no reason, at all. Apparently specimens of this type are bred occasionally in Australia, and one of them came to light here this week. His name is Norman McDonald, * labourer, 29 years old, who, at the time when he obtruded himself last on public notice, was serving a sentence at Long Bay penitentiary—six months, imposed so recently as October 28, 1932 —on a charge of consorting with criminals. On November 11, it seams, a warder found McDonald smoking, and reproved him. McDonald used insulting language, and the warder opened the gate of the yard to escort him back to his cell, whereupon the prisoner attacked him, dealing heavy blows which almost stunned him. Other officers came to his aid, and McDonald, calling loudly upon the other prisoners to rescue Mm, was finally dragged away. But as he parsed the warder who had first annoyed him he ingeniously twisted himself free and kicked that unfortunate official heavily on the shins. Of bourse, McDonald, when brought before the Court, alleged cruelty and brutal threats oil the part of the warders. But the magistrate was not a credulous person, and after hearing something of McDonald's record, gave him an additional three months' imprisonment. In reply to questions, McDonald himself admitted that he had been punished twice for assaulting warders during a three years' sentence, which finished this year. But this was a small matter compared with what the police had to say about him. Detective Sergeant Comans testified that he had known McDonald for seven years, and that he had been frequently cliarged with assault and robbery, but that "he and his criminal associates had always intimidated the witnesses" so that he usually escaped conviction. However, he described the prisoner as a man "of violent nature," and classed him as "the worst member of Sydney's underworld at the present time." To illustrate the prisoner's character and piethods of life, the detective told this remarkable story: —"He had known McDonald to have an argument with a man in a hotel, to go out and pawn his sleeve links to buy a revolver; and then came back and shoot the man twice." There are some close parallels to this lin a remarkable book in which the gangster, Danny Aliearn—a very real and active factor in the life of New York's underworld—makes his profession of faith. But why should Sydney be condemned to reproduce the worst features of that criminality which is degrading and destroying the great cities of the United States ? Or is there something in Lombroso's doctrine of a hereditary criminal type after all?