DESPERATE MAN

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 89, 12 October 1937, Page 18

DESPERATE MAN

SLASHED WRIST IN COURT FAILURE OF LENIENCY PLEA : (From "The Post's" Representative.) SYDNEY, October 9. After his appeal for leniency had been refused, in the Quarter Sessions Appeal Court, Thomas Owen Drury, 29, marine engineer, drew a safety razor blade from his pocket and slashed his left ujist. Drury had appealed to Judge Sheridan against his conviction and sentence of two years' imprisonment imposed on him at a. Police Court on charges of false pretences, urging that the sentence was unduly severe. He asked | that he should be given a chance, | though, he said, he recognised that his record did not warrant leniency being extended. He attributed his lapses to excessive drinking. If he was given a chance, he pleaded, his people were prepared to send him to New Zealand. He asked to be bound over for five years. ■ Judge Sheridan disrriissed the appeal, whereupon Drury asked that the sentence should be reduced by one day so that he might be placed in the less-than-two-years division, which would enable him to obtain certain gaol privileges. The Judge declined to accede to that request. Drury, accompanied by a warder, then quietly walked to the rear of the court, and in a second had slashed-his wrist. Warders and court officials grappled with Drury, arid wrested the blade from him. A tourniquet was applied, Drury sitting quietly while it was being applied. While Drury, securely held by warders," was awaiting, the arrival of an ambulance, Judge Sheridan announced that the would reduce the sentence by one day. Drury suffered'no ill effect from the slashing. . Before Drury was taken to the Appeal Court from Long Bay gaol he was', searched by two warders. He was kept under the close scrutiny of warders at the court, and it was not possible for anyone to hand him a, blade without being seen. The.blade was probably concealed in the lining of Drury's coat and was missed when he was searched.