PRISON FOR SOLICITOR

Greymouth Evening Star, 8 April 1933, Page 10

PRISON FOR SOLICITOR

CLIENTS’ £90,000 LOSS. LONDON, February 11. Sentence of three years’ penal servitude was passed at the Old Bailey yesterday on Kenneth Edmeads Bartlett, 49, solicitor, for fraudulent conversion of money belonging to clients. Mr. G. D. Roberts, prosecuting, said that among clients whose money Bartlett had taken w.is Lady Holderness (widow of Sir Thomas AV. Holderness), who had entrusted him with £3.199 towards the purchase of a house. Within a week of his taking (lie life savings of £450 of another man. who wanted to buy a garageBartlett filed his petition in bankruptcy. He seemed to have lived in fairly good style, having a flat in Piccadilly at £3OO a year and a country house at Tadworth Heath. By his admissions in the Bankruptcy Court he had been in financial dif:’cultics since 1924. In the last twelve months ho had misappropriated £14,000. The total amount of his liabili ties was given as £130.000, ami (lie money he had misappropriafcd ||, >m clients, £93,009. Tim; la: t sum included loans, so that the amount would be reduced to some extent. Mr. J. P. Valetta, defending, said that Bartlett married a lady of means and lived with her on terms of com,pletc happiness. His practice brought him in £7,000 or £B,OOO a year, and his position could only be accounted for by his gullibility. Mr. Stanley Charles Mercer, clerk to the Trustee in Bankruptcy, said that Bartlett's wife appeared as a creditor for £35,000.