LIFE INSURANCE FRAUD

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 3718, 9 November 1926, Page 7

LIFE INSURANCE FRAUD

MRS SEVAN'S SENTENCE “A MOST SERIOUS OFFENCE"

Airs Susannah Bevan was lonml guilty, with a strong recommendation to mercy, at the Old Bailey on September 9, before Judge Atherlcy Jones, on the charge of obtaining £2,881 from the Prudential Insurance Company by false pretences. She was also found guilty of fabricating evidence with intent‘to mislead a judicial tribunal, and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment in the second division. She was originally charged with conspiring with her late son, David Bevan, to defraud the Prudential Company, but the judge held that there was no evidence on this charge. Mrs Bevan, who pleaded not guilty, was alleged to have insured her life lor £5,000, and then, by leaving her clothes in a cave at Ilfracombe and disappearing, pretended to have been drowned. She was arrested in the name of Trixie Finch in New Zealand. Mrs Bevan, when cross-examined, agreed with Mr AVhiteley that in February, 1922, she was insured for £4.800.

Counsel: Did you ever try to insure your life for a larger sum?—l cannot remember.

Mr White ley then handed a document to Mrs Bevan, saying that it was a proposal to insure her liic lor £IO.GOU.

Mrs Bevan agreed that the signature might be hers, but stated that she did not remember anything about it. Mr Whiteley: Can you explain- how you came to make a proposal to insure your life for £IO,OOO? —I cannot. Was not the premium £7OG. and dul not the proposal fall through because you were not prepared to pay that large sum?—l don’t remember. That proposal was made about a lortnight before you made your will m 1922?—1 cannot remember anything about it;

Mrs Bevan said she had a dim recollection of going to a cottage In Ilfracombe on the day of her disapjiearanee. She was then wearing a macintosh, and an - aged woman at the cottage provided her with shoes and stockings. Her next recollection was of being at Exeter station, where another woman befriended her and took her to the Girls’ Friendly Society Hostel. She admitted writing to her daughter-iu-hnv as “ Aunt Trixie.”

Mr AVhiteley: Why did you think it necessary to keep uji that farce when your daughter-in-law knew you were not Trixie Finch but Mrs Bevan?—l do not know.

Shall 1 suggest a reason? Was it so that if the letters fell into other people’s hands your identity would not bo revealed? —1 did not want people to know I was Airs Bevan. Mr St. John Hutchinson, for the defence, said the jury would have to ask themselves if the frail creature in the box struck them as the sort of woman able to carry through a fraud in the most extraordinary, cleVcr, and brilliant manner.

The Judge, in passing sentence, said he coi#|d quite appreciate the motives that had led the jury to recommend Mrs-Bevan to mercy, T>nt she had been found guilty of a most serious offence, deliberately carried out, with great skill and remarkable ingenuity. She had committed the crime in what she conceived to be the interests ol one who, lie was sorry to say, had been a most unworthy son. As Mrs Bevan had been in prison since February, the judge said ho would not pass a heavier sentence than six months in the second division. On the application of counsel, the judge directed that the money paid on the insurance policy should be restored to the Prudential, subject to such power as ho had in the matter. He recognised that there would be another stage in which the application would come before a higher court.