False Advertisement For £100 “To Help Baby”

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30499, 22 July 1964, Page 14

False Advertisement For £100 “To Help Baby”

(New Zealand. Press Association)

WANGANUI, July 21.

An advertisement in a Wanganui newspaper appealing for a £lOO loan to finance a baby’s emergency operation was false.

This was revealed before Mr B. S. Barry, S.M., today when Mabel Adelaide Hamilton, aged 30, pleaded guilty to two charges of false pretences.

Detective-Sergeant P. W. Harkess said the police had received complaints about the advertisement. The first complainant had read the. advertisement on July 27. The advertisement appealed for the £lOO loan, stating that a child in the Wanganui Hospital needed a serious operation in Dunedin.

The complainant got in touch with the newspaper office, Detective-Sergeant Harkess said, and was told the address of the woman who had inserted the advertisement.

He later saw the accused, who said she required the money to take her baby to Dunedin for an emergency heart operation. She said her husband was in the Wanganui Hospital with leg injuries, and that the baby was a patient there too, he said. Complainant, a man, lent the woman £lOO. A second complainant, a woman, was told by accused that her husband was in the Palmerston North Hospital, and that the baby was in the Wanganui Hospital. Accused said she. already had £lOO, but needed another £5O for expenses, which the woman lent to her, saying she herself had a baby die of heart trouble.

“Inquiries were made by the police,” Detective-Ser-geant Harkess saiid, “and it was found the baby had not been in hospital, did not have a bad heart and was in no need of an operation.” Accused had been in financial difficulties, and her husband was unaware of the matter. They have eight children. .

When interviewed, accusedhad £97 in her possession. She had used the other £53 to pay bills which had been worrying her, he said. Appearing for Hamilton, Mr M. H. W. Lance reserved his submissions when she was remanded for sentence until July 28. Bail was set at £lOO.