PRISONERS AT GISBORNE

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 41, 18 February 1937, Page 11

PRISONERS AT GISBORNE

(By Telegraph—Press Association.)

GISBORNE, This Day.

A sentence of two years' hard labour was imposed by his Honour Mr. Justice Ostler this morning on William McKinnon, mercantile agent, who pleaded guilty to seventeen charges of forgery, uttering, and theft. The offences were said by counsel to be-the result of frenzied betting in an endeavour to recoup previous losses.

A Maori, Thomas Paumea Clarke, who had pleaded guilty to an assault in the early hours of the morning upon another Maori whom he discovered with a woman to whom he was married in Maori fashion was admitted to probation for a year on condition that he paid the cost of the prosecution. .

For indecent assault on a girl Thomas Matenga, who was found guilty yesterday, was sentenced to three months' imprisonment with hard labour. Two Maori youths, George Waititi and Mahuika Allison, found guilty of common assault on two women at Raukokore, were admitted to probation for a year. Waititi was ordered to pay £20 towards the cost of the prosecution, which totalled, £45, his Honour commenting that they were the heaviest in his experience. Only the fact that the victims were women and not girls, and that the jury acquitted the accused on major counts and recommended mercy, saved the prisoners from a gaol sentence, he said.