FORGOT TO PAY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 209, 5 September 1938, Page 7

FORGOT TO PAY.

WEALTHY WOMAN.

SHOPLIFTING CHARGE.

FINE OF £5 IMPOSED.

(Special.—By Air Mail.)

LONDON, August 12.

Said to have been left £20,000, Mrs. Hester H. Nowell, of Prestbury Road, Cheltenham, was fined £5 and £6 9/0 costs at Cheltenham for shoplifting.

Her 14-year-old eon is at a public school. The repercussions of her lapse on the boy were stressed by her solicitor, Mr. J. J. Baker.

"Though the case is very serious for Mrs. Xowell," he said, "it is terribly serious for the boy. He ie the person who will 6uffer most if his mother k convicted."

Mrs. Nowell strenuously denied the charge.

It was alleged that she visited the Bon Marche, Gloucester, during a eale, and put a pair of white shoes in a bag [without paying for them.

She took them to a left property office and collected them later.

Then she tried on a pair of brown shoes, and walked out of the store in them. Again she did not pay. She wae stopped aa she reached the street.

Mr. Baker pleaded that she was more than normally absent-minded.

She could not get served when she wished to purchase the white shoes, and put 2/ for them on a ledge. Then when she was trying on the brown shoes she remembered that she had to make an urgent purchase for her son, and walked away, completely forgetting to pay.