"SHOULD BE BIRCHED"

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 96, 20 October 1933, Page 2

"SHOULD BE BIRCHED"

CRIME OF BURGLARY

YOUNG RELIEF WORKERS

(By Telegraph.-r-Press Association.)

AUCKLAND, This Day.

"The moat effective way in. which you could be punished if the- law permitted it, which it does not, would be to order you to be birched, not with the 'cat' but, as was the custom fifteen or sixteen years ago, by a constable," said his Honour Mr. Justice Herdman when three young relief workers came before him for sentence on. charges'of breaking and entering a'hall at pukemiro. The prisoners were- lan Cameron Colquhoun (22), William Dingle (21), and Donald Innes Reach (20). ■

Counsel pleaded for leniency' ;on account of their youth. He said that perhaps they had been led astray by dthejs on the relief job. : ~

onour said that young men who receipt of charitable aid, and 3 what relief pay .amounted to, taught that when they-went try places they were not free lit crime to. supplement' their

Dingle was sentenced to nine months' hard- labour, Colquhoun to six months', and Reach was placed on probation for two years. , • ■

' "You were associated with : these boys; you were the foreman of. the relief gang in which they worked, and you supplied them with their jemmy," said his Honour to Albert Flewellyn, who was also charged with breaking and entering. In consideration of Flewellyn's previous' good character, however, his Honour imposed a sentence of six mottths. '■