SUPREME COURT

Hokitika Guardian, 18 May 1937, Page 6

SUPREME COURT

YEAR FOR INDECENT ASSAULT. CHRISTCHURCH. May 17. Found guilty on two charges of indecent assault, and one of attempted unlawful carnal knowledge,. Richard Samuel Thomas, aged 53, a blacksmith, was sentenced to one year’s imprisonment with hard labour by Justice Northcroft, this morning. “1 will not taken Jtccusad’s previous convictions into account,” said His Honour “and 1 will allow for the part that drink played, but I have a duty to protect the children of those poor people, who of necessity, must Jet them play on the street.”

SIX MONTHS’ FOR BIGAMY. AUCKLAND, May 17. A statement that the prisoner seemed to have committed a deliberate breach of the law regardless of th*. harm it might inflict on others, was made by Justice Fair when Thomas. Henry Roy Sage, 37, a mechanic, came up for sentence tor bigamy. The evidence in the lower court showed the prisoner was married in 1924. His wife left him three months later to visit her mother, and in the following year met him in a solicitor's office to discuss a divorce.

In July, 1927, prisoner went through a form of marriage with another woman. The judge said prisoner did not take the trouble to get a divorce, and married again without informing the woman of his first marriage. Bigamy often resulted in a woman’s life being ruined. He passed a sentence of six months’ imprisonment.