"RATHER SERIOUS."

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 93, 19 April 1940, Page 3

"RATHER SERIOUS."

PURCHASES NOT RECORDED. SKCOND-HAND DEALERS FIXED. '•We look upon tlic.-e failures to ob>ei\e. the requirements of the law as rather serious. There are r>01) second-hand dealers in Auckland, and unless the Act is oltervcd they become depots for receiving stolen property,"' said Deteetive-Sorgeant MeHugh when George Robert White and Annie McXair, secondhand dealer-, pleaded not guilty to failing to make an entry in their books of a purchase each bad made. Mr. Mclliigh said that two boys had stolen a pair of spectacles valued at 30/ at a theatre, and later sold them to White for l/(i. The boys, when arrested, told the detective where they had sold the spectacles, mid White admitted buying them. l>ut had made no entry in his luiying book of the transaction. There had been no previous com plain t< again-t the defendant. White sit ill it was just carelessness on his part. He intended to give up private buying. Mr. Moiling fined defendant £2. In the case of McXair, Mr. McHugh said, the boys who had stolen the glasses had also stolen a handbag and had' taken it to defendant's shop. Defendant refused to purchase it, but another woman, visiting the shop at the time, offered to buy jt. The defendant then said she would buy it and sell it to the other woman. She did so, paying 1/0 for the bag. When interviewed by a detective she at lirst strenuously denied the transaction, but when confronted by the boys, admitted it. '"This woman was warned in December last, and if there are any further breaches by her the police will move to have her license cancelled," said Mr. McHugh. Defendant was lined £3.