SENT TO GAOL

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 143, 13 December 1940, Page 5

SENT TO GAOL

POSTAL OFFICER THEFTS IN MAILROOM (By Telegraph—Press Association.) AUCKLAND, December 12. A postal officer of 14 years' standing, Bert Tattley, aged 31, pleaded guilty in the Magistrate's Court to two charges of stealing letters addressed to a city firm and a country v bank branch and a third charge of stealing a postal ni te from a letter. ( The police read a statement in which Tatjtley adihitted the offences. He said he kept the, bank-notes and burnt the postal notes and cheques. He thought the total value of the money stolen would be about £30. He spent it mostly on beer, but did not bet. . . The police said that Tatfl'ey was married with one child and had a salary of £320. While the offences were going on over a period, 100 other men employed in the mailroom. were under suspicion. Last October another mail sorter was convicted of similar offences. Tattley's thefts had been committed since the other man was placed on probation.

After hearing an appeal for leniency by Mr. Goldstine, the Magistrate,. Mr. Morling, said he could not allow sentiment and feeling for Tattley's family to prevent him doing his duty to the public. On each of the three charges Tattley was sentenced to one month's imprisonment, the terms to he concurrent.

Though he pleaded not guilty in the Lower Hutt Court yesterday to a charge of having been in a state of intoxication while in charge of a motor car on the Hutt Road, Thomas Rqss Boon was convicted by Mr. A. M. Goulding, S.M., and fined £15. His driving licence was cancelled for four months by the Magistrate, who remarked that the case was practically a boderline one. ,