ASSAULTED AT HOME IN AUCKLAND

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26409, 1 May 1951, Page 6

ASSAULTED AT HOME IN AUCKLAND

(New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, April 30. Mr Raymond Seton Belsham, aged 44, president of the newly-formed Auckland Waterfront Workers’ Union, was assaulted by three men on the doorstep of his home at 77 Virginia avenue, at 9 o’clock to-night. He was admitted to the Auckland Public Hospital suffering from concussion and cuts to the scalp and face. His condition at a late hour was not serious. Mr Belsham was in bed in a front room talking with a relative when panes of glass in the windows facing the front veranda were broken. He went to the door in his pyjamas, and was confronted by three men. One, later described by Mrs Belsham as a large man whom she thought she could Identify, struck Mr Belsham. Mrs Belsham, who had come from the rear of the house on hearing cries, picked up a door-stop, a plaster of paris dog weighing about 61b, and hurled it at the intruders. She said that one of the men caught it and threw it at her husband, striking him on the back of the head. Mr Belsham fell stunned to the floor in the corridor, and the men fled. Inquiries by a large party of detectives and uniformed police began immediately, and the car in which it is believed the assailants made off was soon traced. It was believed at a late hour that an arrest was imminent.

Mr and Mrs Belsham's two children, Douglas, aged 10, and Pam, aged seven, were in bed when the attack occurred. Douglas ran to a neighbour’s house for assistance, and the police were notified. An ambulance arrived within a few minutes, and Mr Belsham was carried from the house in a stretcher.

Mr Belsham’s home, where he has lived for the last nine years, is the last house in Virginia avenue, and is in the partly-isolated area at the bottom of the Newton gully. It stands about 6ft from a steep and unformed roadway. The attackers' car had been parked, according to Mrs Belsham, in Manning street, about 50 yards up the hill from the house. The men ran to the car, which raced away with one man still clinging to the running-board. It turned into Takau street, a blind street leading off Virginia avenue, and without lights sped down an incline. About 500 yards from the turn-off it crashed into a parked 15cwt truck, damaging the truck's front mudguard and bonnet.

The owner of the truck rushed from his home to the road when he heard

the crash. The car was then at the blind end of Takau street. He heard a door slam and the motor start, and then the car backed up the street, and passed him at a high speed. By this time other residents had come to the street, and the number of the car was noted. It disappeared up Virginia avenue toward Eden terrace. In red paint with lettering about a foot high the word "scab" nad been painted twice on the front of Mr Belsham's veranda. Pieces of rock had broken four small panes of glass in the sitting-room window, and one pane in Mr Belsham’s bedroom window. On Friday night, the evening before the Waterfront Workers’ Union was formed in the Town Hall concert chamber. Mr Belsham was assaulted at his home. . In spite of pain he attended the formation meeting. A friend who visited Mr Belsham this evening some hours before the assault said that his host was a very sick man, incapable of defending himself. He had spent most of the day in bed, and arrangements had been made for him to enter hospital to-day to check a diagnosis that he had suffered two fractured ribs.