YOUNG BANK CLERK.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 22 December 1924, Page 7

YOUNG BANK CLERK.

STEALS MONEY FOR WEDDING. ARRESTED AFTER HONEYMOON. (BY TELEGRAPH-—PRESS ASSOCIATION AUCKLAND, Dec. 19. Harold Keith. Jones, aged 23, a clerk till recently employed on the ’Staff, of the Bank of Now Zealand, was sentenced at the Supreme Court to undergo' a period of reformative detention not to exceed two years on a charge of forgery and uttering. Mr. Dickson, who represented the prisoner, made a plea for probation. Jones had forged a cheque for £450, said counsel, and this had led to his first offence in court.

It was always an extremely painful thing for a judge to deal with a young man, just starting out in .life with a decent education and upbringing, said Mr. Justice Stringer. If it_ were only a matter of considering an individual case alone it would be a different matter, and His Honor might feel justified in granting probation, but the punishment had to be exemplary as well as punitive. His Honor had a duty to perform. Here was a single man with no dependents and not pressed by necessity, but having engaged himself to be married and not having sufficient means he had, to use his own expression, “devised this scheme’’ so as to be able to carry out the ceremony in what he thought to be a becoming manner. Prior to this the judge had quoted from prisoner’s statement, which ran: :t L discovered that I was not in a position financially to celebrate my wedding in such a manner as I wished to do, and I devised this scheme to forge the name of a. client of the bank to enable me tO' carry out my wedding in a manner in which I thought it should be carried out.” Judges had set their faces against leniency for men who had violated '"their trust wlien in responsible positions, except in special circumstances. His Honor could find no special circumstances here. In passing sentence of two years’ reformative detention. His Honor said he would make a recommendation to the Prisons Board that Jones be placed in one of the penal institutions where he would he kept separate as far as possible from men of the criminal class.

An order was made for the return of the money recovered when prisoner was arrested on returning from his honeymoon.