ACT OF REVENGE

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 96, 20 October 1933, Page 10

ACT OF REVENGE

PIQUE OF A WOMAN

BUSH CAMP FIRE *

(By Telegraph .—Press Association)

. . ROTORUA,This Day. A story.that had an element of human drama was -told in the Rotorua Court today when Bernard McCauley (27),' bushman, of Ngongotaha, 'was charged on three counts with committing mischief by setting fire to two hutments in a timber workers' camp -at the Mangarewa Gorge/ about 18, miles from Eotorua. . Arising dut.of the same set of circumstances a- charge of counselling and. procuring McCauley to commit, a. crime was admitted by a young married woman, Emily Brown, who in a statement to the police admitted that she had- been friendly with one of the occupiers, a young bushman named Harold Manning, but that, piqued by attentions which Manning was paying her younger sister, she procured McCauley to burn down his hut. Manning's hut stood next to that occupied by another bushman, Harold Keaney, and this also caught alight and was destroyed. The value of the huts and the personal effects lost by tho two1 men was over £100.

Tho police said that the huts were part of a lonely bush encampment and that the camp was deserted during the weekend the crime' was committed. As the Tesult of investigations McCauley was interviewed and admitted setting fire to Manning's hut. In his statement to the police MoCauley said that he had been actuated by a personal grudge against Manning, but this was not borno out by subsequent investigations, which brought Mrs. Brown into the story. It appeared that the woman, who, was. 38 years of age and married to a husband of 65, had been friendly for some years with Manning, but that lately Manning had commenced to show attentions to her younger sister. Piqued by this, Brown had apparently procured McCauley to bum down Manning's hut. McCauley had admitted riding out to tho camp while it was deserted, breaking a windbw.and pouring a bottle of kerosene inside to which he applied a match. The Magistrate sentenced both the accused to a term of two years' reformative detention. Ho remarked that the woman was worse than the male accused. He considered that she was a dangerous woman, and should be placed under restraint. The fact that she had a family of four young children, he considered, did not justify him in imposing a smaller penalty than that in tho ease of McCauley.