"IN HIS CUPS"

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 8, 9 July 1935, Page 11

"IN HIS CUPS"

SHOPLIFTER CONVICTED

A VARIED ASSORTMENT

A shoplifter "in his cups"—to use the words of counsel —spent a short but busy time in a large city department store yesterday afternoon, and by the time his pilfering was detected had collected a varied assortment of goods that included toilet soap, face powder, face cream, and other necessitous feminine articles. He was William Mark Barker, a tramway conductor, aged 40, and he pleaded guilty in the Magistrate's Court today before Mr. E. D. Mosley, S.M., to stealing goods valued at £1 7s 5Jd from the Willis Street branch of Woolworths (N.Z.) Ltd.' He was fined £2, in default 14 days' imprisonment. Sub-Inspector C. E. Roach said the accused was on leave and evidently | got'bn the drink. "He did not got drunk exactly; but he had sufficient liquor to make him under the influence of liquor," said the sub-inspector. "In this state he went into Woolworths about 4 or 5 o'clock last night, and, apparently, he must have purloined something from every counter he stopped at.' The things he stole were a very varied assortment; it appears he simply walked round the shop and put little things he fancied in his pocket as he .went along. He was detected by one of the assistants making away with some face cream, but he produced that and put it on the counter again. He was taken to the manager's office and a constable was sent for. He was searched, and all these articles were found in his possession. Nothing was wrapped up, and the goods were obviously stolen;. but the accused said that he had bought them. He admitted afterwards that he had stolen them. He has not been before the Court before for anything involving dishonesty: he was, however, convicted of bookmaking, but that is going back to 1927." A TROUBLESOME CASE. Mr. W. P: Rollings, who appeared for the accused, said it was a troublesome case. "It appears that this man was in his cups, and he displayed a feminine trait in his acquisitiveness," said counsel. "The things he stole were of no use to him or anybody else. In fact, he was so muddled or, intoxicated that he was unable to tell me which branch of Woolworths he' was in, whether it was the Willis Street branch or the Cuba Street branch. ' He was inclined to think it was the Cuba Street branch." ' ' ' The accused had been on leave from the tramways for about ten days, said counsel. He had an accident with his bicycle, and yesterday was his second day put of bed. He met friends, who took him from hotel to hotel, and he mixed his drinks unwisely. The reason for his going to Woolworths, according to the-accused, was that he had bought an electric light adaptor there and had to return to change it. The difficult feature of the case was that technically it was a case of shoplifting. The offence was purely an aberration brought about by liquor; and the conviction would carry far more punishment than that inflicted by the Court. The Magistrate: It is quite right that it should. I will, on this occasion, make, the defendant the subject of a monetary penalty, although-1 do not usually in cases of shoplifting. Shops of this nature are absolutely what I could call unprotected, and very liable to depredations of this kind. Barker was allowed 48 hours in which to pay.