£3,000 SUIT-CASE THEFTS

Greymouth Evening Star, 1 July 1933, Page 4

£3,000 SUIT-CASE THEFTS

STORY OF LOVE AND CRIME. LONDON, May 17. Theft of suit-cases from railway trains in all parts of the country, containing property of the value of £3,000, were described at the Old Bailey yesterday. Arthur Hay. aged 45, describee as an engineer, pleaded guilty to three of the thefts and asked that over thirty others into consideration. It was stated that he had been chased 3,000 miles by a railway detective. •, Hay was sentenced to three years penal servitude. Mr John Maude, prosecuting, said, that one of the suitcases, belonging to Lady Reckitt, wife of Sir Philip B. Reckitt, contained property worth £2,300. It was stolen between York and Kingj’s Gross. Nearly all the cases were stolen while trieir owners were in the dining car.

Hay was an educated man, and his appearance was such as would not cause him to be suspected. He gave himself u,p, saying that he was overwrought from the continual expectation of being arrested. He had been chased 3,000 miles by a railway detective and was on the verge of being arrested. Detective-Sergeant Croucher said that Hay was divorced from his wife, who, with their four children, was now in Australia. , He was educated at a orkshire grammar school and became an engineer. In 1908, when he was convicted of stealing cameras, he attempted suicide. After this lie went rubber-planting. LIEUTENANT IN WAR. In the war he served in the Dardanelles and became lieutenant in the Tank Corps. In 1927 he went to Australia, and there lie was sentenced for thefts at Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane.

Returning to this, country, he was sentenced at Manchester in 1931 to six months’ imprisonment for stealing £2,000 worth of jewellery. Of the £3,000 worth of property stolen in the present case, £l,OOO worth had been

recovered through his assistance. Mr. St. John Hutchinson, defending, said that at the outbreak of war Hay was at Singapore, and he returned to England at his own expense to join up. During the railway strike he volunteered and came under the supervision of the late Sir Henry Thornton. When Sir Henry took over the Canadian National Railways he took Hay with him and made him an inspector at a salary of £l,OOO a year. Hay married in 1917 a woman who had some means. There were four children. To his horror Hay found his wife wa s unfaithful to him. He was so shattered that he took to drink for a time. He left Montreal, and after a period in England went to Australia and became on friendly terms with a married woman. Her husband found out their association and the woman committed suicide.

On the proceeds of the present offence h e went on a pleasure cruise and met a young woman, lie had told her all about his past life, and she was still prepared to marry him. Sentencing Hay, the Recorder (Sir Ernest Wild, K.C.) said that when Hay came back to this country he began a perfect orgy of this particularly dangerous class of offence.