WIFE’S DEATH

Greymouth Evening Star, 19 August 1940, Page 10

WIFE’S DEATH

FALSE ADVERTISEMENT The insertion as an advertisement in the “Evening Post” of a false notice of his wife’s death was admitted in the Magistrate’s Court at Wellington, by John Foster,'6s, a waterside worker, but Mr. J/L. Stout, S.M., dismissed as trivial the charge brought against him under the Police Offences Act of causing an untrue notice of death to be published. Chief Detective P. Doyle said that in July the defendant was unable to go to work on the wharf for two days, and when questioned by the bureau manager about his absence, he said that his wife had died.* The manager remarked that he had seen or heard nothing about it, and the defendant replied thait he had been too busy to arrange for an advertisement notifying the death but he would do so that day. He accordingly handed to the newspaper office an advertisement in the form of a death notice. As a member of the Waterside Workers’ Union, Foster was liable to be stood down for absence from work without a satisfactory excuse, but he had a legitimate

reason for his absence in that he was being evicted from the house he occupied on the occasion he missed work. “Like all people cruelly affected by poverty, he wanted to hide it,” said Mr. F. W. Ongley, on Foster’s behalf. His real reason.would have been well received, but he made an untrue statement that his wife had died and he had to cover it up with the advertisement. Counsel suggested that the case be dismissed as trivial.