FARMER KIDNAPPED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 147, 23 June 1934, Page 4 (Supplement)

FARMER KIDNAPPED.

FORCED NIGHT RIDE IN CAR. GAGGED BY MASKED MEN. | The adventures of a farmer who was "kidnapped" after being gagged and bound by a number of masked men were investigated by the Hampshire and Sussex police. The farmer, Mr. John Thomas Chalmers, of Noar Hill Farm, Newton Valence, Selborne, was carried 15 miles to Harting Hill, in Sussex, in a saloon motor car and was then left at the roadside. It was when he staggered into the Ship Inn, at Harting, early one morning in a state of collapse that the alarm was raised. Mr. Chalmers, a married man, aged 33, had displayed notices on his farm regarding the best way to kill foxes, and, he said, a man called at his house, asking if he would like to buy a fox skin.

"I arranged to meet him in the evening about 9 o'clock near a railway arch some miles from my home," he continued. "I drove to the spot with a farm labourer. I walked along with the man to a lonely side road. Six or seven men then appeared with goggles over their eyes and masks over their mouths.. I shouted to the farm labourer to run for help, and he dashed away. He was chased, but got clear. "A sheet was thrown over me, and I was bound and placed in a large motor car, which drove ofL When I was put out of the car the men poured beer over me.. Eventually I made my way to the Ship Inn, about a mile away."