FIVE YEARS FOR COUNSEL

Greymouth Evening Star, 16 September 1938, Page 2

FIVE YEARS FOR COUNSEL

■'NOTHING MKB THE

LONDON, July . 31.

Sentences of five years’ penal servitude were passed at the Old Bailey yesterday on Fredrick Joseph teuill, 51, author and former barrister, of Cheyne-place, Chelsea, and Frank Ronald Whelan, 36, formerly a solicitor’s managing clerk, of BedfordPark, AV. They were convicted of conspiring to defraud Harold Edwaid Guylee of £6,100 and obtaining money by false pretences. Addressing de Verteuil, Air Justice Alacnaghten said, “You brought ruin and disgrace on yourself and all those connected with you and discredit to the profession to which you did belong.” • . x f Guylee, now serving a sentence ot five years’ penal servitude for fraud, alleged that he was told by the accused that the money was to “grease the whels in the High Court to pay officials in the Public Prosecutor’s office and to stifle publicity.” The Judge, summing up, said the charge was of such enormity that one could hardly believe it possible that anyone could be so base as to commit it.

He referred to the bill submitted by a firm of solicitors, Pittman and Davison, to Guylee. for his defence — £3OO for an application for bail,. £2,000 for police court proceedings and £8.925 for the trial. That £11,825 was a gross overcharge. Was Whelan merely a clerk to Pittman and Davison, or conducting the business of a solicitor under that name? Mr Bernard' Gillis, addressing the Judge on behalf of de Verteujl, said the fact that he had been disbarred was perhaps the greatest punishment which could fall on any member of the Bar. There were members of the Bar who had practised with him, to whom he was an honourable colleague, who could say he had in every way maintained the position of the Bar.

Mr Justice McNaghten: You are speaking of that which is within my own experience.

Mr Gillis said that one had to go 'back a long way in legal history to compare with this lamentable tragedy. There was nothing in the annals of the Bar like the case which had been disclosed.

Mr Justice Macnaghten: showed considerable emotion, when he passed sentence on de Verteul. “There is much in what Mr Gillis has said to which I could speak with personal experience,” he said. “For the offence of obtaining money by false pretences the legislature has fixed five years’ penal servitude as the maximum sentence. 1 do not think when that enactment was made, the offence of which you have been found guilty could have been in the contemplation of the legislature. I will say no more. .

“I think that public, justice requires that, that should be vour sentence."

The judge, addressing Whelan, said that in some respects his offence was less because he was not a barrister, but in other respects it was worse.

“A man like you masquerading really as a. solicitor is a source of corruption lo the administration of justice. ’’ he added.