THEFT OF £l200

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25160, 16 April 1947, Page 9

THEFT OF £l200

HOSPITAL PATIENTS’ PROPERTY OFFICER REFORMATIVE DETENTION ORDERED (P.A.) WELLINGTON. April 15. Gilmer Cunningham Whyte, aged 28, a clerk, was sentenced to two years’ retordetention by Mr Justice Smith in the Wellington Supreme Court to-day for the theft of £1207 from the Wellington Hospital Board. Counsel for the accused, Mr W. J. Stacey, stated that the accused’s father had made good other defalcations by his son totalling more than £2600. Whyte had been employed by the board as the patients' property officer, his duties being to collect patients’ money when they entered hospital, as well as their pension money from the Social Security Department, said his Honour. In many cases the receipts had been forged, and the prisoner appropriated the money, the reason being that he was engaged m gambling, and having lost, plunged in an attempt to recoup. As usually happened, the attempt failed. Prisoner had been employed in a position of trust, and though it was his first offence, and he was only a young man, a sentence must be imposed that would be a deterrent to others. “The prisoner got in the hands of unscrupulous bookmakers,’’ said Mr Stacey. “I us£ unscrupulous from an investigation I made. There were two bookmakers, and one of them was a justice of the peace. When he lost money he started, so to speak, robbing Peter to pay Paul, and in less than a year got through the astonishing sum of more than £2600.” His father had paid that sum, and it was returned to the people concerned, but then thp- prisoner discovered there was still £2OO short. He did not have the heart to ask his father for it, and started gambling again, so that the sum lost became more than £l2OO.