DEBTS COLLECTED

Evening Post, Volume C, Issue 112, 8 November 1920, Page 8

DEBTS COLLECTED

BUT MISSING AGAIN.

"Professional men worked for the money, and'this man kept, it. He was; in a position of trust, and abused that trust, by taking tho money in a wholesale way," was the manner in which Mr. F. K. Hunt, S.M., summed up the case againstan elderly man, Henry George Walmsley, who' pleaded guilty at the Magistrate's Court this morning to fifteen charges of having failed- to account for various sums of money collected by him on behalf of various persons. ■ ' Walmsley, said Chief-Detective Ward, had something of a record. Some years ago he got into serious trouble, and on being discharged from prison in 19l£ obtained positions at the Porirua Mental Hospital, and later under the Defence authorities, and then gave every satisfaction. In 1919 accused took, over a debt 1 collecting agency," under the title of the "Professional Agency," and then commit-' ted a long series of thefts, of which those' listed in the/charge sheet were a. part. Apparently the business had progressed well for a time, but the man had later found himself in a hopeless muddle.

Mr. C. B. O'Donnell, who appeared for the defence, made a plea for lenient treament for the man in view of the fact that he. had latterly lived honestly, but the Magistrate said that he, could'hot, on account of Walmsley's previous ;■ conviction upon charges of false pretences, theft, and; embezzlement, do less than sentence him to six months' imprisonment on each of two charges, the 'terms to be cumulative. On the remaining thirteen charges Walmsley would be convicted and discharged.