POSED AS WOMAN

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 22, 27 January 1942, Page 7

POSED AS WOMAN

MAN SUSPECTED AS SPY

(P.A.) TIMARU, January 26. How a well-known Timaru businessman paraded in women's clothing in Caroline Bay on Sunday when he1 aroused suspicion as a spy and was later arrested in the women's waitingroom of the Timaru Railway Station, was told in the Magistrate's Court today. The accused was William Claude, Marcelle Preen, married, aged 41." He' pleaded guilty to being found unlawfully in the waiting-room at the station.; The police said Preen could give no excuse for his conduct but probably' had seen so many women in male attire that he thought he could wear female attire. The idea had been in, his mind for some time and he hadbought the clothes in Christchurch-and-. Timaru. There was no evidence that, he had molested any women. When found in the waiting-room, he was' in the reading-room and was reading a book and smoking, which was nothing out of the way for women these' days. It was mentioned that he had travelled by train to Christchurch dressed in the same way. Counsel, said Preen, who had been drawn in the last ballot, had been respected in Timaru for the last 24 years. His lapse was the result of some craze to see how it would feel to dress like a woman. He had been thinking about it for a long time, and with his wife away and mobilisation pending, it was his last opportunity. • The Magistrate, Mr. Morgan, said the case was probably one for medical investigation rather than punishment as a criminal offence.

Preen was ordered to come up for sentence il called on within 12 months.