SWIFT JUSTICE

Evening Star, Issue 22974, 3 June 1938, Page 2

SWIFT JUSTICE

, THEFT OF £1,478 seven years for guhmah Seventeen days after he had held up a mill manager and a cashier with a pistol and robbed them of £l,4r», Thomas Albert Morgan, aged -do, a steward, was sentenced at Manchester Assizes to seven years’ penal servitude. The robbery occurred on April 9, and Morgan was arrested in London three days later, after a hunt which was described in the police court as one in which “every modern method of crime detection— photography, wireless, Press, and the police—was employed.” Morgan pleaded guilty to robbing Ernest Thompson Barnish, mill manager, and James Fowler, cashier, of £1.478 while armed with a pistol. Mr Glyn Blackledge, prosecuting, said that Mr Barnish and Mr Fowler were in the employ of T. Moss and Sons, Lostock Hall, Preston. On Anril 1 Mr Fowler, as he was leaving the. bank, saw Morgan watching their movements. It seemed quite clear, said Mr Blackledge, that he was planning “ this obviously premeditated outrage.” PISTOL HIDDEN UNDER ARM. Mr Blackledge demonstrated with a leather holster the manner in which it was alleged Morgan had the pistol hidden under his left arm. “It is in such a position that nobody can see it,” he said, “and you can do a very quick draw.” . Describing the scene beside the car when Morgan joined the two men, Mr Blackledge said that Mr Barnish and Mr Fowler got the definite impression from Morgan that he was a desperate man, who was ready to shoot. They were forced to drive, he said, at the point of the pistol; to a quiet place just outside Preston, and then told to walk away at the pistol point and not to look round.' Morgan then drove off with the money.

Mr Blackledge said that Morgan, in a statement, said that for three or four years he had been friendly with a Mrs Dorothy Pickburn. of Leyland. On November 8 he was involved in an accident while she was a passenger in his car, near Lewes.

Mrs Pickburn was taken, to hospital, where she died shortly afterwards. “In the hospital we were entered in the books as Mr and Mrs Morgan,” the statement continued. “At the inquest I told the same story to the coroner, as I did not, want anyone to know anything about it.”

“PERPETUAL FEAR OF ARREST.” Mr W. H. Openshaw, for Morgan, said: “This case has received a large amount of publicity, and, according to my client, the circumstances have been greatly exaggerated.” Since Morgan had been in England he had kept a revolver for shooting at “ Birds and rats, and things like that.” He emphatically denied that he watched the men on the Friday before the offence. Morgan maintained that the revolver was not loaded. “When he came back, intending to try to settle down after this accident,” said Mr Openshaw, “he found that there was a warrant out for his arrest on a charge of perjury.” Mr Openshaw asked the judge to accept the view that Morgan had acted on a sudden impulse which would never have occurred but for the events of a few months before. Sentence was passed as stated,. . : ■