STOLE £l70 AND WENT ON HOLIDAY

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 64, 9 December 1936, Page 5

STOLE £l70 AND WENT ON HOLIDAY

Hotel Porter For Sentence THEFT FROM EMPLOYER AT PALMERSTON NORTH Dominion Special Service. Palmerston North, December 8. Details of a hotel porter's holiday jaunt by air, rail, and service car with money taken from his employers sate were given in a statement made by Malcolm Victor Smith, store assistant, and read at the Magistrate's Court to-day when he pleaded guilty to the theft, as a servant, of £l7O, the property of Edward Houlihan, proprietor, Imperial Hotel, Palmerston North. A charge of theft of £250 was withdrawn. Detective-Ser-geant J. Bickerdike prosecuted. Messrs. \V. G. Ashworth and D. J. Lovelock, J.P.’s, committed Smith to the Supreme Court at Wellington for sentence. Detective Orme Power said that when he interviewed Smith on December 6 be made a statement which, after reading through, he said was true but that, he preferred not to sign it in the meantime because he had not taken as much money as was alleged. . . To this statement, which Detective Power read to the court. Smith said he wished to make an explanation regarding the disappearance of £250 from the hotel. He wished to tell the truth and clear the matter up. He had been married eight months. Eor three months he was employed as a porter at the Imperial Hotel at £2/15/11 a week. He was getting on all right there until he heard that other members of the staff and he were suspected of selling beer and not accounting for the money. He was serving in the private bar on the night of October < when he needed change. The custom was to go to the office for change, but when he went no one was there. He decided to get the change from the safe himself. The keys were there, and when he opened the safe he saw the roll of £5 notes. On the spur of the moment he took it. He did not know how much was in the roll; he did not count it then or later. He did not think there was £250. Later in the evening he saw Houlihan and told him he was leaving, using as an excuse the fact that he had been suspected of not accounting for money from sales. Leaving work he decided to take Ins wife for a holiday. Her. people lived at Riverton near Invercargill, and they 7 decided to go there. They travelled by air to Blenheim, and by car to Havelock. He was born at Havelock and knew many people there. They stayed there three days. He kept £lO and got the licensee of the hotel where they stayed to put the rest of the money in the hotel safe. The licensee counted the money, and there was £l5O in £5 notes. His wife and he went to Christchurch, by service car, and then to Temuka. They travelled second-class rail to Invercargill and then went to Riverton, where they stayed three weeks with his wife’s people. They returned to Dunedin by rail, and then by air to Blenheim. They stayed another week at Havelock, when be did not have much money left. They returned to Palmerston North by air on November 7, and he had remained here since.

At the time of leaving Houlihan’s employ he had £39 of his own in the savings bank, and had since drawn it all out bar £5. He had none of the money left which he took from Houlihan’s hotel. He did not think there could have been more than £l7O in the roll of notes he took. While on the holiday and since, he had spent a good deal of money on holidaying, clothes and incidentals. He had not been to races or gambled. He had had some drink, but not much. He gave no money to his wife's people. To account for the money he told his wife it. was money he had saved and won at gambling, and as far as she knew that was the truth. He took it on the spur of the moment. He did not know it was there previously. When he went to the hotel office to get change as far as be knew there would, as customary, have been someone there. Miss Rona Joyce Bolland, niece of Houlihan, and employed as a clerk in the hotel office, said there was not less than £175 in notes in the hotel safe on October J. Shortly after 6 p.m. that day Mr. and Mrs. Houlihan and she went upstairs. There was then no one in the office, and the keys, including that of the safe, were left there. Smith was near the office when Mr. and Mrs. Houlihan and she went out that night. Next morning the bundle of £5 notes was missing. She immediately told Houlihan.