ALLEGED THEFT

Evening Star, Issue 15892, 26 August 1915, Page 7

ALLEGED THEFT

AN UNUSUAL CASE. [Pee United Psess Association.] AUCKLAND, August 25. Charges of theft against" Ernest George Nurse, aged about 35 years, occupied the Supreme Court yesterday and to-day. The case for the Crown was that for some time th© prisoner had carried on business as Nurse and Go. in the Dominion and in Birmingham. Then he and his brother started a firm known as Nuks Ltd., having shops in Auckland and Christ-’ church. They arranged to give their bank a “bearer debenture” for £B,OOO, one of the provisions being that they were not to dispose of any of the stock except by ordinary means of sale. Rater on the bank mad© a further advance of a smaller amount, after which business was considered unsatisfactory, and a receiver- was put in. While negotiations were in progress the accused went into one of the company’s shops and took away 59 diamond rings, valued at £799, while on the same day he entered a second shop and took 33 rings, valued at £502. Three days later he took a large quantity of rings to Wellington. Some of the jewellery had been recovered, but the balance, which the accused said, he had posted to Birmingham, had not been traced. The defence was that the value of the jewellery taken, away was not sufficient to endanger the. bank’s security, and the jewellery was taken .by Nuts© for the benefit of his other creditors; that Nurse’s actions were open and above-board, and not intended to defraud. Tlie jury, after a lengthy retirement, returned a verdict of ‘'Not guiltv.”