BLACK-OUT CRIMES

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 48, 26 February 1942, Page 4

BLACK-OUT CRIMES

SERIOUSNESS STRESSED

The danger to which women who are in their homes unaccompanied under black-out conditions are exposed was stressed in thd Magistrate's Court yesterday by Detective-Sergeant W. McLennan when he prosecuted in cases against James Perry, boilermaker, £ged 51. Perry pleaded guilty, before Mr. J. L. Stout, S.M., to being a rogue and a'vagabond, in that he had been found by night in an enclosed yard in Fitzherbert Terrace, and to the theft of two handbags and a purse and their contents. "This man," said Mr. McLennan, "went round the houses at late hours during the night, crawled through open windows, and stole the handbags from the rooms. He is a notorious housebreaker." At the present time, continued Mr. McLennan, when the city was blacked out, the position was more serious than usual. "Women are by themselves, at night-time in the houses, and men of this type crawl through windows and steal from the residences," he said. Perry had previously been before the Court for arson, having set fire to a building which he had en* tered. / The accused had nothing to say. The Magistrate said that, in view of what had been said by the police and in view of the accused's record, he would have to deal with Perry severely. Sentences totalling 18 months' imprisonment were imposed.