Trial Of Hotel Owner On Receiving Charge

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29239, 24 June 1960, Page 6

Trial Of Hotel Owner On Receiving Charge

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, June 23.

The trial of Clara Hallam, aged 78, owner of Lloyd’s Hotel, Cuba street, on a charge of receiving stolen furniture, is expected to conclude in the Supreme Court at Wellington tomorrow morning. Mr Justice Haslam is presiding at the trial, and Mr J. D. Murray is appearing for the Crown. Hallam is represented by Mr R. Stacey.

Giving evidence on her own behalf, the accused said that she was approached by a man, who gave his name as Wilson, who wished to sell Some furniture. She told him that she had all the furniture she wanted, and he went away. He came back again, and the accused said she asked him if the furniture was stolen. The man told her that it was from his own house. She eventually gave him £l3O for the furniture.

The accused told Mr Stacey that when the detectives asked her whether she had bought any furniture recently she promptly replied, “Yes, last night” Cross-examined by Mr Murray, the accused said she often helped persons down on their luck and men recently discharged from prison. She knew now that the man Wilson was in fact Tommy Morgan. “I asked Wilson if the furniture had been paid for, and he replied, “Yes, at the Maple,” said the accused. “The whole thing was a swindle on his part” Prisoner’s Evidence William Tawhai, at present serving a four-year sentence for his part in the theft of the furniture from Foss Shanahan’s residence and other offences, told of his part in the taking of the furniture from the house. He said that when the articles were taken to the accused she asked if the stuff was “hot,’’ and she was assured that it was not.

To Mr Murray Tawhai said that on the night that the furniture was delivered to Mrs Hallam he and the three others concerned were not drunk, but they were merry. Tawhai admitted to Mr Murray that he had once lived at Lloyd’s Hotel.

Detective lan Lindsay Mills, said that a man named Morgan was awaiting trial at the August sessions on a charge of breaking into Shanahan’s house. The accused’s description of the man from whom she bought the furniture was a fairly approximate description of Morgan. The witness agreed with Mr Stacey that the accused regularly kept very late hours. She was usually seen about the hotel as late as 3 a.m. Search of Hotel

The witness said the hotel was four or five floors high, and a systematic search was made by 17 detectives and uniformed policemen. On each floor there was a large baggage room. There were

dozens of suitcases in the cubicles —“our approximate check was 400.” They were all full of a wide variety of personal objects and belongings. The witness said that he looked through one room which had once been a lounge or sitting room. It was wrist high with new bedding, pillows, cutlery, “and everything you could name.” There were a number of wireless sets and a grand piano on a floor below.

The search lasted until 4 a.m. and the occupants of every room were roused. The accused cooperated with keys, and was present throughout. The witness said that a stolen vacuum cleaner had been found in a Watson street flat owned by Hallam and occupied by a constable. Mr Stacey: And that vacuum cleaner is the only object out of this variety of objects in the hotel which formed the subject of any charge? The witness: Yes. It was an identifiable article. The witness said that the accused explained that the vacuum cleaner was left at her hotel by a lodger who entered hospital and died there.

Provident Fund Loan.—The National Provident Fund has approved the Christchurch Drainage Board’s application for a loan of £50,000. The loan is to be repayable with interest at 5 per cent, over 30 years. The issue will be part of a £900,000 sewerage loan.