MAGISTRATES’ COURTS.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1523, 4 January 1879, Page 2

MAGISTRATES’ COURTS.

♦ CHRISTCHURCH. Saturday, Januaey 4. (Before R. Walton and F„ E. Wright, Esqs,, J.P.’s] Drunk AND Disorderly.—A first offender was fined ss. Alexander Leckia was fiued ss; Wm. Chapman and Edward Golding wore fined Ids respectively. Michael John O’Connor, alias George Cunningham was remanded for seven days for medical treatment. An Unsupported Charge. William Henry Izon and Joseph Hall was charged with stealing a retriever dog, the property of Charles Gcorgeson. Mr Loughnan appeared for the defendants. The prosecutor, a laborer living at the Hornby Junction, stated that he gave the defendants accommodation for a, night at his tent, and on the evening of the following day he found his dog missing, and, the defendants both gone. Prosecutor valued, the dog at £2. Defendants asked him to sell the animal but ho refused, as it was only ic. his charge. He subsequently took a warrant out for the defendants’ arrest on the charge of stealing the dog. Constable Bashford, being sworn, deposed that lie arrested the defendant Izon on a warrant on Mr Phillips’ station, Coalgato. When arrested, be said that he was the man described in the warrant and that his mate Hall had taken the dog back. Sergeant Morico deposed that the defendant Hall called at the depot the previous day bringing the dog (the subject of the charge) with him. The witness told him ( hero was a warrant out against him and the defendant for stealing the dog. Hall explained that he had stopped with his mate at a tent at Hornby one night and left the following day. On leaving they missed a knife. The dog followed them to the Hornby railway station, and they took him to Coalgate, where they wore going on a shooting expedition. They did not think that there was any harm in taking the dog, as the prosecutor had offered to sell them the animal, and they had lost their knife. When they found the police were making enquiries they at once returned the dog and gave themselves up. Mr Loughnan said the defence was substantially the same as given in the explanation made by the defendant Hall to Sergeant Morice and detailed by the sergeant in his evidence. The defendants were both new arrivals in the colony and were respectable young men. They had no dishonest intention in allowing the dog to follow them. They considered the prosecutor had made it optional with them to purchase it, and when they found that a warrant wa,s out against them they had at once surrendered themselves and restored the animal. They first took the dog back to the prosecutor’s tent, but found that since they had quitted it it had been burnt down, and consequently the defendant Hall took it to the police depot. The Bench believed the defence to bo the truth and that the defendants hud only acted imprudently without any dishonest intention, and at once discharged them.

LYTTELTON. Saturday, January 4.

[Before AY. Donald, Eeq. and 11. Allwrighfc,

Esq., J.lVs] Lunacy.— A man apparently forty-five years of ape, named Thomas Stephenson, on remand from Kaiapoi, for treatment for lunacy from intemperance, was committed to the Asylum.