ALLEGED THEFT.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue 7387, 13 February 1902, Page 2

ALLEGED THEFT.

After we went to press, the charge of theft against Mrs Hurliman, of Normanby, was continued.

Constable Whitebouse said on the 6th he went to Mrs Towers' hous9, and found that the dairy had been broken into, woodwork holding wire netting across a window having been torn away. He returned next afternoon, and found that someone bad put a tin bowl, bucket, saucepan, hammer, and an old skirt on portion of a shelf just inside the window on which there had been noting the day before.

Joseph Towers, son of Mary Ann Elizabeth Towers, said be went to his mother's house on the evening of the 6th. The dairy window had been broken since the preceding day. Mr Welsh did not think it "necessary to deal at length with the facts as to whether Mrs Hurliman was the person who had broken into the bouse. There must be, counsel felt sure, grave doubt in the mind of His Worship, as there was in his : counsel's). Mr Welsh then reviewed the evidence. He did not think Mrs Keid's evidence would satisfy the Court that accused was the person whom she had seen removing the wire from the window. He said this having* regard to Mrs Read's undoubted bona fides, but it was a well-known fact that persons often in some measure moulded their ideas as to something they saw on the knowledge that came to them through subsequent events. The distance between Mrs Read's place and Mrs Towers' was considerable, and it was possible that Mrs Read had been deceived. Apart from Mrs Read's evidence, there was nothing to connect Mrs Hurliman with the theft. |

"His Worship said he did not think there was any evidence to go to tbe jury to connect accused with the breaking and entering of the bouse. There was not a particle of evidence that the accused had entered the house, and there was, further, a most peculiar fact to be considered, namely, that two £1 notes and silver had been stolen from a room in the house whioh there was nothing to show accused had been near. It would seem probable that the person who stole the money was the one who took the things from the dairy. The accused would be discharged.