DUNEDIN SESSION

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 105, 4 May 1926, Page 8

DUNEDIN SESSION

DUNEDIN, This Day

The criminal sittings of the Supremo Court opened before Mr.1 Justice Sim. The calendar comprises six cases, involving charges against five persons. The Judge, addressing the Grand Jury, said tJhere was a charge of attempted murder against James Patrick Eeid, the allegation being that he attempted to kill George Edward Adams. The two men worked "at Makarora, and the depositions showed that there had. been a quarrel between the two on the way from a picnic, and Adams said he was stabbed with a knife. Stuart Brooklyn Eeid (20), on charges of breaking post office letter boxes and theft of postal packets, and forgery, was sentenced to three years' reformative detention. Counsel, in pleading for leniency, said ifc was a particularly sad case. A brilliant career had been blighted. As a lad he had passed matriculation at 15, and started school teaching as the youngest teacher in the North Island. In 1924 he came to the Training College at Dunedin, and got in with a fast set, and in 1925 the principal asked him to resign. He got work with a magazine company. He found that the postal box of the D.I.C. was flimsily locked, and took the contents out. Later when out of work and destitute he took more. Then he decided to return to his parents in the North Island, and got £36 by forgery. Back at home, before the detectives arrived, the accused got employment in school teaching. Mr. Justice Sim: "A very undesirable person to be teaching the young." William Patrick Guildford, for breaking, entering, and theft at Port Chalmers, was allowed three years' probation, and was ordered to make restitution and to remain prohibited. Arthur Angove and Robert Thomas Beveridge, for breaking and entering, were each sentenced to five years' reformative detention. The Judge remarked that both had qualified as habitual criminals.