UNDERTAKER DEFRAUDED

Evening Star, Issue 26028, 17 February 1947, Page 10

UNDERTAKER DEFRAUDED

MONEY OBTAINED BY RUSE STORY ABOUT BOGUS FUNERAL ' “ Just a cunning false pretender, whose crimes nearly always inclined to the petty aspect of fraud,” was the dese?,ption applied by Clnef-detective T. Y. Hall in the Police Court to-day to Thomas McNeil, who admitted obtaining £2 from an Invercargill undertaker by a story that lie needed the money to purchase clothing to enable him to attend the funeral ot his father, falsely represented as having died that day at the Dunedin Public Hospital. McNeil, who admitted the offence and also a list of previous convictions for dishonesty, was sentenced by Mr J. 1). Willis, S.M., to three months’ imprisonment with hard labour. McNeil had called at the undertaking firm of Fraser and Son, Invercargill, on November 15 last, and had told Mr T. 11. Fraser that his father had died that day in Dunedin and that the body was being railed south for burial at Winton, said the Chief Detective. The accused said that he had been requested to make the funeral arrangements with an Invercargill undertaker, and he asked Mr Fraser for £2, saying that lie needed clothing for the funeral and that he would repay the money.

McNeil said that lie was drunk at the time and had . not remembered about the offence until interviewed by the police. Until this present offence he had been “ going straight ” for a considerable period.