GAMING HOUSE CHARGE

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28540, 20 March 1958, Page 16

GAMING HOUSE CHARGE

Titled Woman On Trial

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, March 18.

The prosecutor in a Mayfair society gambling case played—and lost—a demonstration game of chemin-de-fer with an expert at London Sessions Court today. With the approval of the Court, the chairman, Mr Sebag Shaw, and the expert, a West End restaurateur, Mr Maurice Pommerand, demonstrated for the jury trying three well-known members of London society for alleged gambling offences under a 100-year-old law. Mr Pommerand said he had been a croupier in a number of French casinos.

Before the Court were John Aspinall, aged 31, of Chelsea, his mother, Lady Mary Grace Osborne —wife of the baronet and racehorse owner, Sir George Osborne and John Richard Burke, aged 34, also of Chelsea. All pleaded not guilty to gaming summonses and had elected to go for trial before a jury at an earlier hearing. Aspinall was charged with assisting in conducting gambling and his mother was charged with permitting a room in Hyde Park street to be used for gambling. The charges related to a police raid on a West End flat at 12.45 a.m. on January 10. The police raid took place a few hours after a Rolls Royce had arrived drawing a trailer full of equipment for a chemin-de-fer party, the Court was told. Lady Osborne had said when the police entered the house: “Anybody would think we are a crowd of criminals. Why don’t you catch some real criminals, there are plenty,” according to police evidence.

The case was- adjourned until tomorrow.