VICIOUS FRAUD

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 51, Issue 3184, 19 October 1942, Page 7

VICIOUS FRAUD

£123,000 TAKEN FROM PUBLIC BOGUS “CHARITY” APPEALS The Rev. Harry 'Clapham, a Lambeth vicar, who was found guilty on 21 charges relating to the misuse of money connected with parish affairs, altogether extracted £123,000 from the public from 1926 to 1941. He was sentenced to three years penal servitude and was ordered to pay £lOOO toward the cost of the prosecution.

The sentencing of Clapham ended the greatest series of frauds against the charitable public since Horatio Bottomley. Broad, tall and whitehaired, Clapham wiped his brow and bit his lip when the jury foreman returned a verdict of guilty to each of 21 charges, and he left the dock without looking at his parishioners, who packed the benches. Clapham grasped the opportunity of making easy money when he saw how postal orders and cheques poured in in answei’ to a genuine hospital appeal. His first letters, based on a begging list, which he bought for £1 10s, grew to 200,000. Within a year he had a big car, a television set, and sent his son to Cambridge. He bought a business for a brother and cottages for his sisters.

He did not distribute old clothes sent to him as the result of an appeal. They were mostly sold at weekly auctions, which netted another £lOOO a year.