SIXTY CHARGES

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVI, Issue 24, 28 December 1925, Page 11

SIXTY CHARGES

against school teacher. REMARKABLE AUDACITY. SYDNEY, Dec. 17. For sheer audacity, the operations of a teacher of an exclusive girls SchcKu at Edgecliffe, Sydney, arrested on 60 charges of false pretences, will take some beating. For more than a year the woman, who is exceptionally well educated, lias been a language mistress at the school, attended by the daughters of wealthy city business men. In the course of her conversation with ono of the pupils, detectives claim that the teacher discovered that the girl s father had an account with one of the city’s largest retail stores. She was informed by the girl that her father allowed his wife and daughter to purchase articles without question, and that his accountant always paid tho accounts without question. When the last quarterly statement reached her father’s office, however, lie opened tho letter himself. Casually glancing through the statement, lie noticed mtfliy articles which he had not expected liis wife to purchase. So lie took tho account home with him and showed it to his wife and daughter. They told hini they had not purchased such articles as children’s expensive toys and such items mentioned in the statement. , £ Ho put the matter m tho hands ot tho detectives, and subsequently they arrested one of the teachers at the school, who, they alleged, had been making purchases daily for three months and charging them to the account of her pupil’s father. Sixty separate charges have been made against her in consequence. The police searched her home, and found most of tho articles. Tho puzzling feature, so far as the police are concerned, is that there was no necessity for the woman to act as sho is charged with doing. She has her own home on the North Shore line, a residence worth considerably more than £2500, with a tennis court attached, from which she receives money from several clubs which use it. In addition, sho is in receipt of an income from her husband, who is employed in the country, and sho drew a substantial salary from the school where she taught.