AN OLD CHARGE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 231, 30 August 1937, Page 6

AN OLD CHARGE.

HARD LABOUR IMPOSED. Unusual circumstances were associated with a case heard in the Magistrate’s Court, to-day, before Messrs J. A. Nash and N. Blackmore, J.P.’s, in which the charge related to an offence alleged to have been committed in 1922 at Dargaville. Accused was Robert John Calder, labourer, aged 36, of Foxton, and the charge was that on July 10, 1922, at Dargaville, he stole a quantity of gum valued at £7 10s, the property of John Wydur. Accused elected to be dealt with summarily, and entered a plea of guilty. Detective-Sergeant Meiklejohn said that for 12 months prior to the offence accused had worked in Dargaville and had scraped kauri gum for John Bradanovitch. On the night of July 10, 1922, accused broke into the store of John AVybur and stole 601 b of first-class gum, including 201 b of specimen gum. He sold some in Dargaville and had, taken the rest to Auckland, selling it there. On August 3, 1922, he was interviewed by the police, but said he had gone to Auckland on July 9 and had denied that he had- taken any gum with him. As a result, further enquiries were made and a warrant was issued, but accused had by then gone away. He was hot located until August 24 this year, when he came before the Court. In that period, from 1922 to this year, accused had not come before the notice of the police. In announcing the decision of the Bench, a sentence of one month’s imprisonment with hard labour, Mr Nash commented that the amount involved was not great, but there was something worse in that accused had apparently evaded the charge for all those years. It was fortunate for the police that they had been able to locale accused at Foxton.