HONOURS FOR A SONG

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 80, 28 December 1935, Page 16

HONOURS FOR A SONG

Alleged Offer To Business Man

Stated to have posed as a personal friend of Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, Arthur Cowin Mason, 45, a tall, welldressed man, of St. Paul’s’Road, Wellington, Manchester, was remanded at Salford, England, on a charge of attempting to obtain 50/- by means of false pretences. Superintendent Howard said that a local business man, living at Eccles, received a telephone call purporting to come from a Mr. Mason, a journalist. The caller asked him if he would like to be included in next January’s Honours List, and a meeting was arranged at the business man’s office. This appointment was kept by a man who was apparently the person who made the telephone call. He told the business man that he was a personal friend of Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, who had asked him to submit to him a list of names of men in the North of England who would be worthy and suitable to receive an honour. Another meeting was arranged for the afternoon, but in the interval the business man went to- the police. A microphone was installed at the meeting place, and when Mason attended the conversation which took place was

taken down in shorthand by a concealed officer. Mason, it was alleged, again represented himself as a friend of Mr. MacDonald and said that on numerous occasions he had been able to get honours for people in this way. He added that he was covering the North of England for this purpose. The false pretences complained of, added the superintendent, were that prisoner had said lie was a personal friend of Mr. MacDonald, that he was able to go to Mr. MacDonald and put the business man’s name forward if be could obtain 50/- to go to London to cover his fare and incidental expenses, and that if that money was forthcoming the honour would be conferred. “We shall be in a position to show,” said the Superintendent, “that this friendship does not exist, and that the whole of his story was false.” Detective-Inspector Barnfield said that when Mason was charged, he replied: “What I have said is true. I was going to London, as I said, and you cannot charge me. as I did not go.” In reply to the magistrate. Mason denied having said that Mr. MacDonald entrusted him in this way.