MATERIAL STOLEN FROM CARGO

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24799, 13 February 1946, Page 10

MATERIAL STOLEN FROM CARGO

MAN SENT TO GAOL FOR RECEIVING

(P.A.) WELLINGTON, February 12. Pilfering from ships’ cargoes was insidious and rampant; it was calculated and premeditated, and consequently all the mere serious, said Mr Justice Finlay, in the Supreme Court to-day, when he sentenced Walter Leslie Kilner, aged 45, a company manager, to six months’ imprisonment with hard labour for receiving a quantity of dress material stolen from an overseas ship. He did not profess to judge who promoted the scheme, said his Honour, but there was a breach of trust on the part of members of the crew, and the prisoner collaborated. Pilfering was a serious offence. involving great public loss, and unless there were receivers there would be no pilfering. All that argued a substantial sentence, but he was very conscious of the grievous loss the prisoner had brought upon himself, beside which anything the Court might do was minor. One was bound to take into account the prisoner’s previous high character, and the good work he had done in the public inteiest during the war. The sentence would have to be such as to give him a chance to rehabilitate himself.