CIVIL SERVANT'S

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 121, 18 November 1936, Page 20

CIVIL SERVANT'S

THEFT

SPECIAL CASE FOR LENIENCY

"The Public Service must be kept 'at the very highest standard, but despite that fact there are, in my opinion, special circumstances about this case, justifying application for reinstatement," said Mr. J. H. Luxford, S.M., in the Magistrate's Court today, when discharging without conviction a civil servant whose name was ordered to be suppressed upon a charge of theft of £2 4s 7d, the property of the New Zealand Government.

' Detective-Sergeant -L. Revell prosecuted.

Detective W. R. Murray read a statement in which the defendant said that a man wished to make a payment at the office where he was employed when that office had really closed. In order to oblige the man, the defendant had accepted the money, and as the safe was locked, he had put it in with his own. On his way home that night, he bought some food for the baby, and paid a small account. He found next morning that he had overspent his own money, but, as he had promised to send a receipt, he took one from a spare book. He then got panic-stricken, lost his head, and tore the rest of the page of receipts out of the book. When the Audit Department rang up about the missing page, he immediately made a clean breast of the whole business. He was married, with one young child, and received £255 per annum.

Mr. W. D. Goodwin, who appeared for the defendant, entered a special plea for leniency.