STOLE FROM CLIENTS

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 55, 8 March 1929, Page 11

STOLE FROM CLIENTS

BATCHELOR SENTENCED

TWO YEARS' DETENTION '

(By Telegraph.—Press Association.)

CHHISTCHUKCH, This Day,

■ In tho Supremo Court, Mr. Justice Adams sentenced John Black Batchelor, ex-solicitor, to two years' reformative detention on; charges of theft of £1200 of his clients' money.

Counsel for Batchelor said that perhaps tho true explanation of the terrible calamity that had befallen this j'oung man was that he had commenced in practice as a mere youth of 21 within a, few months of qualifying in the profession. Later on he was forced into crime by a combination of circumstances. . '

] The Crown Prosecutor said v that Batchelor had started in practice with small qualifications, except a good deal of ignorance, inexperience, and personal conceit. His affairs became muddled, and he entered upon a course of dis^ honesty, which continued uninterruptedly from 1924. until the time when he ran away.

'' Counsel talks of tho, conscience of the accused, but thero is no sign of it, not even in tho statement he made out on the boat," stated the Crown Prosecutor.

The Judge said that Batchclor's example would have a most serious effect on the reputations of those carrying on their business in a perfectly honourable way. It would bring on these trustworthy and honourable people undeserved suspicion and distrust. The persons least able to lose their money were the most easy victims. As a result of the discovery of the facts the prisoner would be struck off the roll of a most honourable profession, to which he ought never to have belonged. When a man entered upon the practice of such an honourable and learned profession he ought to know better than to be guilty of fraud.