POSTAL OFFICIAL'S LAPSE

Evening Star, Issue 19437, 21 December 1926, Page 3

POSTAL OFFICIAL'S LAPSE

A YOUTHFUL OFFENDER In the Police Court this morning, before Mr J. H. Bartholomew, b.M., a youth of seventeen years was chame.U With having stolen from a postal packet a £1 note, the property of the iost-mastcr-General. Elizabeth Wilson, of Ravcnsbournc said she received on November -M last a registered letter from a person in Gore. This contained £4 in single notes. Acused was the post boy -or Ravensbourne, and delivered the letter. Witness could not say whether the letter had been interfered with. bhc < had burned the envelope. . Leslie Faulkner Smith, enquirv ofhcer attached to the Chief Post Office, Dunedin, said accused was a postal official, and had been in the service about twelve months. \\ itne.-l niterviewed accused on December 7 with reference to some money missing from a registered letter addressed to a Mrs Wilson. Accused made a statement admitting that he had opened the letter and abstracted one of tho live bank notes,resen ling the letter and deliverinrr it to the addressee. Accused added that ho had never before interfered with any postal packet. Accused said that ho had hcen in the service two years; and the, witness Smith explained that ho had been a classified postal officer for twelve months; prior to that ho was a message hoy. Accused pleaded guilty ami was committed to the Supremo Court for sentence. Bail was allowed in £SO, and one surety of £SO. His Worship added that as tli© lad was only just over juvenile age he would order the name to lie suppressed until tho matter was dealt with by the Supreme Court.

He (bitterly): “Tho mere fact that you refused mo doesn’t bother me. There are others.” Sho (sweetly) : “ That’s why I refused yon.” First uncovered by soldiers practising trench-digging in 1916, a burial ground of prehistoric times near Wit ham, Essex, has now been excavated and found to be part of a Celtic settlement, dating hack to about 2000 n.c.