THE DOWNFALL OF A MAN

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 36, 12 February 1938, Page 27

THE DOWNFALL OF A MAN

"Bereft of everything except the bitterest memories, he goes away to nothing but a cell." In these word?, defending counsel at the Old Bailey, London, described the plight of a once prosperous solicitor, says the "Daily Express." Formerly one of the most popular figures in his native town, genial, generous, and gay, today he is a ruined man, deserted by his friends. Middle-aged and heavily-built, the man, Henry Barnard Snow, aged 54, of Southend, spent a-weekend in Wormwood Scrubs Prison, preparing to go to Maidstone, where he will serve a five-year sentence for converting £16,658 of his clients' money. Only two women visited him when he was in Brixton Prison . awaiting trial, a former woman client and her 18-year-old daughter. "We did it just to cheer him up,'* the woman told a newspaper representative. "When my daughter and I visited him in Brixton, we did not know at first that we were the only people going there. He seemed so' down in the dumps and everybody seemed to have deserted him, so we wrote to him and saw him and just tried to brighten things a little for him. "I have known Mr. Snow for twelve years, ever since I went to him for advice when I first came to Southend from Scotland. Even now I don't think he is a rogue. Just a generous fool, for whom circumstances have been too much, and who has been badly let down by some of the people he tried to help. "My bigge.st surprise was, when he

was arrested, to find that all his friends had deserted him. "Personally, I have still such faith in him, that if he could get back, I would still trust him with everything I have. "I went to Brixton to see him ihe day before he went to the Old Bailey. He was then quite resigned, but bitterly disappointed that he could not get bail. He gave several, names of people to the police, but nobody would stand for him. " 'Perhaps,' he told me, 'I'm like many men before me in finding that a shilling in my pocket is my best friend. "'I have been almost a father to some of the people' in Southend since their boyhood days, yet they never .came forward to try to help me, but just turned their backs on me." "He was always a -quiet, homeloving man, and though at one time he entertained on a big scale, I never saw him anywhere with anybody except his wife and daughter. "I have known him help people with medical fees and pay for operations. On one occasion he became a subscriber to a hospital in order to find a bed for somebody who had appealed 'o: him for help. "To me it seems a terrible thing that a man so kindly and so clever should drift away to prison like this. I know he has injured many people in Southend, but only because he was a fool, not because he was a knave. "It's a long way to look ahead, but if we can do anything for him when he comes out, we shall do it. He will need friends then."