SAVED FROM PRISON

Evening Star, Issue 23377, 21 September 1939, Page 18

SAVED FROM PRISON

YOUTH SPOILED BY DOTING MOTHER Instead of a possible tenn_ of bard labour within prison walls, 25-year-old Clarence Leigh, of Pendleton, Salford, Lancashire, has been given his freedom and the chance to make good by many months of real hard labour aboard a whaling ship in the Arctic. Leigh, wno as a boy was spoiled by a doting mother, was saved from prison by the plea of Mr George Arrowsmith, A Pendleton garage proprietor, who afterwards told an interviewer that he was a firm believer in the maxim that “ there is a little good in the worst of us.” Before the Salford Recorder Leigh pleaded guilty to breaking into a wine shop and stealing two bottles of whisky, valued at 255. He was stated to have a, long list of previous convictions in

Britain and in Canada, to have been deported from Canada as an, undesirable person, and to be a liar who easily turned to crime.

Explaining that he had known Leigh from his childhood days, Mr Arrowsmith said to the Recorder;

“ I have been able to get him a berth on a whaling ship. It will take him to the Arctic regions for eight months and the work is hard, but I think it will give him an opportunity to find his manhood and enable him to become a useful member of the community instead of a burden on the State.”

Rinding Leigh over until the ship sailed, the Recorder, Mr A. M. Langdon, ordered Leigh to report to the police on his return, adding: “If all goes well you can start a new and happy life.” At Mr Arrowsrnith’s garage, where Leigh was working until the whaling ships put to sea, Leigh told the ‘Nows of the World ’ that he was deeply grateful to Mr Arrowsmith for his intervention.

“The ship can’t sail too soon for me,” ho said, “ and I am really looking forward to the months I shall spend on her in the Arctic.”

“AFFECTION LAVISHED.” ,Hc has no illusions about the gruelling conditions under which men of the whalers have to work, and he is glad of the opportunity that has come his way. “ I pleaded for and helped Leigh because of the anxiety which he had caused hie family, who are very respectable people,” Mr Arrowsmith explained. “ His brothers and sisters were grown up when he was born, and he was idolised, and probably ruined by the affection lavished upon him. His mother died when he was 11 years of age, and he was orphaned soon after that. “ This whaler trip will do him good. During the months that he is in the Arctic he will have neither the time nor the opportunity t q get into trouble. *“ I have little doubt that my expression of hope to the Recorder that it would make a man of Leigh will be fulfilled.”