PLEA FOR ACCUSED MAN
“TRYING TO GO STRAIGHT.” LONDON, December 23. A woman’s plea for a man at Croydon Police Court on Saturday resulted in his being placed ou probation. Frederick Standen, 42, was charged as a suspected person. He was found loitering at Shirley. The police reported 22 pervious convictions, and suggested that he should be committed to the sessions as an incorrigible rogue and vagabond. Mrs. H. L. Grant, of Streathbourne, Smallfields, Horley, asked from the back of the court to be allowed to speak for Standen. She said that 11 months ago Standen called selling lavender and asked for work. She had since employed him half a day a week in her garden. “I guessed he had been in prison,” she continued, “but he had not been with me a week before the local police informed me that. 1 was employing a criminal. “I said that so long as he was all right at his work he could continue it. 1 do not believe in turning down a man for his past record. He has worked well and has been strictly honest. Though sometimes he has seemed to be half starving, he has brought in the eggs, and not one has been missing. He has had opportunities to take things inside and outside the house, but I have never missed anything. “I do believe he is trying to go straight, ami the local police are of the same opinion, but when anything suspicious has happened they have come to see him. 1 never realised before employing him what a handicap it is to a man once he has been in prison. If I had been at all squeamish 1 have no doubt that he would have lost his job with me.” The Chairman (Aid T. Betteridge): Would you still employ film if we take a lenient course?
Mrs. Grant: Yes. Most of the charges against him seem to have been on suspicion. You must admit — The Clerk: Do not argue, please. Aid. Betteridge said that largely through Mrs. Grant’s evidence of Standen’s faithfulness in her service, the Bffiich would give him another and last chance by putting him on probation for two years.
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Bibliographic details
Greymouth Evening Star, 12 February 1936, Page 4
Word Count
366PLEA FOR ACCUSED MAN Greymouth Evening Star, 12 February 1936, Page 4
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