A BIG STEAL.

Grey River Argus, 12 July 1922, Page 3

A BIG STEAL.

CHARGE OF CONSPIRACY. MAN ROBBED OF £20,000 DY GAMBLERS. LONDON, May 18. Arrested at Southampton .after travelling first-class on a liner from New York, Charles Grant Lawson, 45, a farmer, of the Ritz Hotel, Paris, was before Mr J. A. Syminons, at the Marylebonc Police Court, charged on a warrant, dated May 2, 1921, with “conspiring, combining, confederating, and agreeing’’ with Charles Maconally, Alfred Dean, ami Maudsleigh J. Dudley, to obtain, and obtaining, between £20,000 and £25,000 from David K. Hall, of Eastbourne, with intent to defraud. “I am not guilty of that,’’ he declared when charged. Mr Herbert Muskett, prosecuting for the Commissioner of Police, said the warrant for the prisoner’s arrest was issued in April last year, but was only executed a week ago on his return from America. Having mentioned that the nil'll with whom the prisoner was alleged to have conspired—Dean, Dudley, Maconally and Marsh—were now undergoing penal servitude, Mr Muskett intimated that for the present he would have to confine himself to a charge against the prisoner of conspiring to obtain from Mr Hall two sums of £5OOO and £3701, Ihe false pretence being that the game of cards played at Dudley’s Hat in Spanish Place Mansions, W., at which the money was obtained, had not been fairly played—that the game was, in fact, a cheat. Other cases might, however, be gone into at a later date; it was a question whether the persons affected could be induced to come forward. Mr Hall was one of the fortunate men of the world to whom the sum of £25,000, which he lost through “these light-fingered gentry,’’ did not seem to I be any great sum. Thousands of pounds were talked about where he (Mr Muskett) would talk of pence, or shillings. Mr Hall was clearly a man of very large means when, in May, 1919, he met one of the gang—a man named Maconallv, or Mansfield, on board ship

on the way from Australia to England. Maconally struck up an acquaintance with Mr Hall, made a very bombastic show of himself and of his financial position, and clearly got into the good graces of Mr Hall on the way home. Ou landing here Mr Hall went, to Scotland; and on returning to London in September he went to stay with Maconally at the flat of a Mr Bernard in Saville Row. They went to race meetings to get her, and had a number of betting transactions, and as a result Mr Hal lost a very large sum of money. But apparently he did not appreciate the class of persons into whose clutche: he had got, for some months later In was visited at the Waldorf Hotel !»’ Maconally. He dined with Maconalh •nd Dean at the Barclay Hotel, am was introduced on that occasion to Dudlev and the prisoner Lawson, who were dining at another table, and were introduced to him as Australian friends of Maconally and Dean. On November | 6 Mr Hall lunched : t a hotel in JcrmVn Street with Maconally, Dean, Dudley, ami Lawson, and after lunch he ac cepted an invitation to Dudley’s Hat in Spanish Place Mansions. Dudley' held the Hat at a rental of £2OO a year, anil tlic place was most extravagantly furnished—that being, it was suggest cd, part, of the stock-in-trade of these men. After lunch a game of cards was suggested, and in the result a game known as “Double Ace” was played, and Mr Hall lost £B7Ol in the course of 20 or 30 minutes. Mr Hall had not the faintest idea that there was anywrong about it, and paid £5OOO by cheque on account, that sum being credited to Lawson’s banking account on November 8, when his credit stood al £235. It was not uninteresting to observe that on Noveiqber 10 Lawson drew out a sum of £3OOO.

Mr Hall afterwards went away to Mombassa, East Africa, and while he was away Dean, without any instructions or authority from Mr Hall, paid Lawson the balance of £3704 that was owing, and telegraphed to Mr Hall that In* had done so. Where Dean got that. £3704 from, Mr Muskett said he could not say, for according to the prosecution he was a iu;,:i of straw. However, Jdr Hall, believing that the matter was straightforward, paid the amount into Dean’s account through his London agents, ami on returning to Englund he ' still found himself in the clutches of the ■ same gang. At a later stage he managed by what was called a wonderful system of horse-racing, with certain winnings, to lose a very much larger sum, but there was no evidence to connect Lawson with that matter. David K. Hall, the prosecutor, who | was permitted not to divulge his ad- ( dress, spoke of his meeting with Mac- I onally on the voyage to England, saying the latter introduced himself, lie said that he dealt in cattle and horses i in Australia, that he held lands in New | Zealand, and that he was going to England to purchase cattle for the New Zealand Government. When witness ; met Dean, the latter was introduced by ’ .Maconally as a squatter from Western | Australia. After Mr Hall had related some of I his transactions with members of the. party the hearing was again adjourned.