CONVICT’S MERCY PLEA

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 June 1936, Page 11

CONVICT’S MERCY PLEA

TWO MONTHS FREE IN 17 YEARS. LONDON, April 2S. An ex-convict at the Old Bailey yesterday made an eloquent appeal for mercy from the dock. Harold Dorien Trevor, 56, an architect. who was first convicted 40 years ago, pleaded guilty to theft and obtaining credit by fraud and asked for 28 other offences to be taken into consideration.

Det.-Sergt. E. Salkins. of Eastbourne, stated that Trevor was first convicted in the name of Atkins in IS9G. He was sentenced at Liverpool in 1914 to seven years’ penal servitude; at York in 1918 to five years’ penal servitude; and at London Sessions in 1925 to three years’ penal servitude. Trevor, in his plea to the Recorder, Sir Holman Gregory. K.C.. said: “You will see I have hact exceedingly heavy sentences. The last was one of 101 years. Now, my lord, you take a man who has been in prison for 101 vears and throw him on the world.

“It is true, there are aid societies, but I put it to your lordship, as a man of experience, is it not almost impossible for a man with any convictions to get employment when there are men with characters and men with trades who find it difficult to get employment themselves?

“A man is by force of circumstances compelled to have recourse to the old form of existence, which brings us here so many times.

“1 did not wish to sponge on relatives. ... 1 can say nothing else except this, that, had any job come my way in the weeks that 1 was out —even a dishwasher’s job—l would have accepted it. “Here I stand again after two months’ liberty in about 17 years. If any outsider can understand the state of a man who has spent 17 years behind prison bars and find himself a failure at my age then, if they be without sympathy I can say nothing further.”

The Recorder: “I have listened with considerable sympathy to what you have said. I believe there is a time in the lives of all criminals when they desire to lead respectable lives. I will put you back to the • next Session to see what can be done for you.”

Later in the day the Recorder recalled Trevor to the dock', and said lie had discovered that the prisoner had one year and eight months’ remission to serve on his old sentence. It. was therefore no use trying to find him work.

For the protection of the public he must deal with him severely. Trevor would have to go to penal servitude Lor five years.