MODEL HUSBAND

Greymouth Evening Star, 29 May 1937, Page 8

MODEL HUSBAND

SERVED THE MEALS

LONDON, May 5. Ex-Detective Charles Holdaway, of the C.1.D., aged 57, was a model husband. While his wife lay desperately ill in their flat in Castle Hill, Dover, he served the meals, washed up, did all the housework. His wife, halfparalysed, could not move from her bed.

Unknown to her, in the next room to where she lay, were counterfeit coins and moulds. There her exdetective husband spent his spare time. He was sentenced at the Old Bailey to nine months’ imprisonment for possessing moulds for coining. Townspeople had complained to the police about the number of bad silver coins circulating in the town. Detectives visited Holdaway’s flat, found him and the moulds. Holdaway had to think quickly.

This is what he said: “I do not know anything about them. I do not know the name of the man who comes here. I know he has been mucking about with coins for a fortnight. 1 know him as ‘The. Colonel.’ He is about forty years of age and has a scar on the right, side of his face. You will find him in the market.” ‘‘The Colonel” could not. be found. But what the police did discover was that Holdaway, in the brief time he had to explain about the moulds, had described a fellow-prisoner during his previous term of imprisonment—a man who was still in gaol.

Holdaway has been convicted seven times before. In 1932 he was sentenced at the Old Bailey to five years’ penal servitude for obtaining money by false pretences and conspiracy to defraud. He was released on license last July.

He joined the Metropolitan Police in 1901. was later attached to the C.1.D., was returned to the uniformed branch for disciplinary offences, and dismissed from the service in 1908 for unsatisfactory conduct. He has lived at. Dover for 19 years, and has been out of work for about five years. Both Holdaway and his wife had been previously married, the family consisting of five children —three girls and two boys. The youngest girl has just left school.