THREE WEEKS' GAOL

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 40, 16 February 1945, Page 6

THREE WEEKS' GAOL

SENTENCE ON WOMAN

ABSENT FROM ESSENTIAL JOB

[ "You have had your warnings and !you have paid no regard to them," said Mr. J. H. Luxford, S.M., this morning in sentencing a machinist, Phellis Mariee Martensson, (27), to three weeks' imprisonment with hard labour. Martensson was before the Court on two charges of breaches of the Industrial Manpower Emergency Regulations—one of changing her address without notifying the authorities and the other of leaving her essential employment without permission. It was stated that defendant was a married woman, but was separated from her husband, a Norwegian sailor.

"Her history is, unfortunately, [ bad," said Mr. I. Kronfeld, representing the district manpower officer, who instanced the occasions on which defendant had absented herself from work. She had been fined on three occasions, he said, and the last time she was before the Court she was warned that she was heading for gaol. She had been found drinking in hotels on numerous occasions during the past two years. There was nothing he could say in her favour.

The magistrate commented that defendant's case was a long story of a deliberate breach of the regulations, and the punishment he was imposing was only a part of what she would get if she continued to flaunt them.