Milk Money Taken From Bottles

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31985, 12 May 1969, Page 1

Milk Money Taken From Bottles

Thieves have been active in the last month in the Bryndwr, Bishopdale and Papanui area taking money from milk bottles. Four vendors have been affected.

One vendor, Mr W. E. Blake, said that the thieves followed a regular pattern and spent a lot of time for little gain.

“We use a lot of tokens and they would have to cover a lot of ground to get even a little bit of money,” he said.

He said that the theft of the money caused inconvenience and ill-feeling between himself and his customers. People did not like paying for their milk twice. Mr P. A. Caithness, president of the Canterbury Milk Vendors’ Association, said last evening that there had been a raid on his round on Saturday evening. “They took milk bottles

from the boxes at about 25 houses but only got money from one or two,” be said. The token system was now widely'used and had cut down

the number of thefts, he said. “They just don’t take tokens. If only everyone would use tokens we could get rid of all this,” he said.

Mr Caithness said that it was necessary to use a “pay-at-the-gate” system because another form of money collection, with the associatefl accounting system, would necessarily put up the cost of delivery of milk. An elderly woman in Cashel Street found that money left for milk and cream had been taken from her box at the week-end.