CRIMINAL COUPLE

Hawera Star, Volume L, 11 February 1931, Page 4

CRIMINAL COUPLE

UNUSUAL STORY IN COURT. WIFE’S DRAMATIC PLEA. (United Pres* Association—By Electric Telegraph Copyright LONDON, Feb. 7. "He would not have been a criminal he had not loved me,’’ said Shelagh Hann, aged twenty-four, when pleading ilty at the Middlesex sessions to three charges of house-breaking with her husband, Qeorge Evelyn Hann, "god thirty-one, whom a detective described as the son of the Superintendent of Prisons at Fremantle. Shelagh admitted giving a false name when she married. A detective gave evidence that Shelagh had been trained as a hospital nurse, but gave it up owing to illhealth. She disappeared from home and lost her memory in 1928, hut recovered it and married Hann in December. Hann served with the British Army during the war and later joined the American Army, after which he be>aino a ship’s steward. Hann told the bench that his wife was bitterly opposed to the burglaries. Once when he was going out she took *he tools and threw them into a rivei. He pleaded that other men were involved. He spent every penny on his wife’s and his own maintenance. Shelagh said her husband had clone ■r oil For her as his illness prevented -i'o from working. Hann was sentenced to eighteen months’ imprisonment, and Shelagh to twolive months, but in the second division.