STOLEN COUPONS

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 17, 20 July 1931, Page 10

STOLEN COUPONS

PROBATION FOR WOMAN

One of the women concerned in. the theft of cigarette coupons, the property ,of W. D. and H. O. Wills, Ltd., appeared for sentence in the Supreme Court to-day. She was Elizabeth Haines, aged 34. The Chief Ju: cc, Sir Michael Myers, admitted h«r to probation for two years on the usual conditions and on the further condition that she • pays by instalments under the direction of the Probation Officer the costs of the .prosecution, £7 Is. Mr. R. Scott, who appeared'for the accused, said that 55,000 coupons had been stolen, but there was no suggestion that the accused herself took that quantity of coupons. The accused had taken about two or three hundred herself, and others had been given to her by-a woman who had yet to come up for trial. , Haines had not made anything of a business- of dealing in the coupons; if the figures were gone into it would be found that she actually made £1 17s 6d on tho whole of her dealings. No innocent party had been defrauded by the machinations of the accused, who, as the reports showed, was an industrious and hardworking woman. , "There is one person who has not yet been brought to trial," said the Chief Justice, "and I.don't wish to say a. single word which might prejudice her, but it seems to me that I can say this, that you are probably no better and uo worse than the other two ■women whose cases have already been dealt with in the Lower Court. . . They ■were granted probation, and having regard to the report made by the Probation Officer about you, I think that this Court can treat you in the same way. This is apparently your first offence, and you have the reputation, apart from this offence, of being industrious, hard-working, and honost, and apparently, according to the Probation Officer, you have shown and are showing great penitence. . ."