“SILLY VANITY”

Greymouth Evening Star, 31 December 1940, Page 9

“SILLY VANITY”

WOMAN’S AMAZING TALES. Alleged to have posed as a British Secret Service agent, Catherine Brown, aged 27, was charged at Salford City Police Court, Lancashire, under the Defence Regulations, with unlawfully doing an act falsely to suggest she was in the service Majesty. Brown, who was said to be a native of Airdrie, Scotland,, pleaded guilty. A suggestion that the case should be heard in camera was rejected by the Stipendiary Magistrate, Mr F. Bancroft Turner, who, however, agreed that the names of Army officers concerned should not be revealed.

Superintendent L. Milner, who prosecuted, said that during August the defendant, a domestic servant, was in communication with an Army captain whom she had met last Summer before he joined the Army. When she first met him she told him her mother was Russian and that she was connected 1 with a Clydesdale firm of shipbuilders and was employed by the British Government. She told him some remarkable stories, including one about a journey in a submarine. Superintendent Milner said that police inquiries had shown that Brown had given way to extensive lying and that she had a peculiar mental make-up. ‘She has only to think of something out of the normal before she puts it into actual fact.” She had told the Army captain that she had been to a certain barracks in the district and had got intq touch with several officers of high rank. This story was also untrue. Her identity card gave her name as “Katisha Brown,” whereas her real name was Catherine Brown. She had volunteered a statement after her arrest in which she said there was no truth in any of the correspondence. Detective-Sergeant Cooney said that defendant’s efnployers described her as a good maid, but inclined to romance.

The defendant said: “I have said all these things and I am sorry. I did not intend to create any harm in any way, and had no intention of harming anyone else when I did.” The magistrate pointed out that “these things are only done in a spirit of vanity, but they are dangerous in times like these,” and defendant replied: “I realise that now. I’ve been very foolish, and am only sorry that the Army captain’s name has been dragged into it.” .Announcing that he would bind Brown ovei’ for 12 months, the magistrate said that if he thought she had intended any harm, or even if she had done any harm without in-, tent, he would have dealt severely with her, because it was a matter of great public importance that people should not pretend, even innocently, that they held positions which in fact they did not hold. “What you have done has been out of silly vanity.’ You have only done it to individuals whom you wished to impress, but it must be clearly understood that this port of offence, however innocent its intent, cannot be allowed.”