ELOQUENCE WASTED.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 18603, 30 January 1926, Page 3

ELOQUENCE WASTED.

PRISONERS* APPEALS FAIL. His Honour Mr Justice Adams yesterday sentenced to a term of imprisonment two men who were arrested some time ago in an empty house at St. -Martins with gelignite in their "possession. Walter Fraser Sheriff Harneiss and Joseph Hogan Byrne, the prisoners, were set in the dock for sentence, on charges of breaking and entering the premises of the Richmond Working -'Jen's Club, of M. E. Norton. J. A. Holmes, Packer and Jones, and A. Clark. A quantity of gelignite was stolen from the premises of Clark, and some of it had been used by the prisoners to force open a gate leading to the premises of Packer and Jones. Harneiss, who had gone to the trouble of preparing a speech, which he read to the Court, made a strong appeal for leniency. "I fully realise the seriousness of the crime committed." he saic]. When they acted as they did, he continued,' they were 1104 in their normal minds. He came from the country after working in the country for some months, and had not been sober nntil lie appeared before the lower Court. They had given the police eyei-y assistance in clearing up the cases of breaking and entering, and claimed that but for their action innocent people might have been injured by the gelignite. Ho had fought in the war and received there an injury which had affected him both plivsicallv and mentally. Byrne said that his wife had died, and that in consequence he had been drinking. His Honour was not impressed by the appeals made to him, and, after remarking that prisoners' records were bad and were of the typo referred to by the Crown Solicitor as being on the increase, sentenced each to two years' imprisonment.