ALDERMAN SENT TO PRISON

Greymouth Evening Star, 12 April 1933, Page 10

ALDERMAN SENT TO PRISON

CO-OP. SOCIETY DISCLOSURES. LONDON, February 22. John William Thwaites, 68, an Aiderman of Newcastle-on-Tjyne, and William Storey Snowdon, 47, engineer’s factor-, were at Northumberland Assizes at Newcastle found guilty of fraud in connection with transactions with the Newcastle Co-operative I Society. ’ Thwaites was senti need to fifteen months’ imprisonment in the second division and Snowdon to ten months in the second division. Thwaites, for twenty-three years a City magistrate, was formerly chief engineer of the society. There was a general charge against the- two men of conspiring between September, 1930, and August, 1932, to defraud the society. Against Thwaites there were also twenty-one charges of falsification of accounts and twentyseven charges of procuring the payment of money to Snowdon by false pretences. Snowdon had to answer twenty-seven charges of obtaining money by false pretences. Alexander Robinson, formerly Thwaite’s assistant in the engineering department, replying to Mr Paley Scctt. (for Thwaites), agreed that on Mr Thwaites’ instructions he had made up parcels from the store for directors. The parcels were sometimes sent to the directors’ houses by the society’s car or vans. Sometimes, he added, the directors called at the stores. Mr Paley Scott: Did they go away empty-handed ? Mr Robinson: I have seen them take parcels away. Isaac Nixon, a member of a firm of auditors, said that the total amount, of the challenged items in the case during the past two years was £550. Thwaites, in the witness-box, said that he bad taken an active part in public movements and in the Labour Party. For many years directors had been in tho habit of coming to him for small things such as high tension batteries, accumulators, garden tools, brushes, and paint. There were about lour directors who came regularly and he gave them what they required.

When there was a. shortage in stock he made out. a. camouflaged order for something else. He had never had a penny out. of any transactions, and so tar as he knew Snowdon had’ only had his ordinary business profit. Tho directors had offered him no inducement, and he undertook this confiiracy without any hope of advantage to himself. He saw nothing wrong in what ho was doing. He would say about 100 directors, departmental heads, and employees had henciilcd through “this philanthropic flora rl nient.” 1 arsing sentence, Mr Justice Finlay it was a most lanieiitahie and scandalous case, which had been carried out with much persistence, much ingenuity, and much skill.