EXPENSIVE EATING

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 5, 6 July 1939, Page 16

EXPENSIVE EATING

BABY'S TWO NOTES

HOW BANKS MEET CLAIMS

(From "The Post's" Representative.)

' SYDNEY, June 28;

Anthony Oliver, 22 months, of Epping, an outer Sydney suburb, showed ah expensive taste by eating part of a £1 note and two-thirds of a £5 note as a pre-lunch snack. ■ * ■

Mrs. Francis Oliver placed her handbag on a bed two feet away from Anthony's cot. Anthony is thought to have got a foot through the bars of the cot and-hooked the handle of the bag. Opening the bag, he took about six bites from a £ 1 note and then tossed it away in favour of a £5 note, at which he munched away.

One of Mrs. Oliver's five daughters told her that Anthony was eating coloured paper. She went to the baby's cot just as Anthony had chewed up to the numbers near the top of the £5 note. The wording, '"This note is legal tender for five pounds," the signature of the governor of the Commonwealth Bank and that of the Secretary to the Treasury, had been consumed.

Anthony refused to eat his. tea that night. Otherwise he was not affected. He was, however, the centre of an "official" inquiry. His. parents were required to make a signed declaration to the Commonwealth Bank before their loss was met. They had to prove to the bank that the missing parts of the note could not be recovered, and that the mutilation was not the result of a wilful and deliberate act.

The case *of Anthony Oliver was hot unprecedented, according to officials of the Commonwealth Bank. "My department deals with dozens of such cases daily," said the chief cashier. "All that the holder of the remains of the note is required to do is to satisfy us as to the reason for the mutilation of the note. We have given Mr. Oliver full value for the notes the baby nibbled."

Members of the staff had sometimes spent hours piecing notes together like a jig-saw puzzle to establish whether they were genuine or not, he added He quoted a recent instance of a 10s note reduced to pulp.. The owner explained that his son's pet goat had swallowed the money. The animal was immediately destroyed and the remains of the note recovered.

Most cases of mutilation are through notes having been thrown into the fire and hastily retrieved. The official said that in winter they always have an army of people who have parked their savings in the gas stove or even in the chip bath-heater, and accidentally cooked them. He quoted the case of a publican who wrapped £150 in a newspaper, put it for safety in the chip-, heater, and went to bed. Next morning his wife lit the heater, took a. bath, and went to church. The notes were charred beyond recognition. "The only consolation we could offer —if you call it consolation," he added, "was that the wife had had the most expensive bath on record."