GREATEST MILITARY IMPOSTER

Manawatu Times, 25 March 1926, Page 12

GREATEST MILITARY IMPOSTER

TRICKED PRISON GOVERNOR “V.C. and D. 5.0.” A man who had been described by 'lie police as England’s greatest mili>tary impostor was sentenced at the Condon Sessions recently to three years’ penal servitude, after being found guilty of.a.series of frauds. Ho was sentenced in the name of Stratford, but his name iq George Densham, He is 59 and a native of Exeter, who has had 15 previous connstlons in England and in Canada. Densham’s stock-in-ltrade is an old Canadian military uniform, a plausible tongue, and a diseased hip. Always he told the story when obtaining food, lodging and money .that he was a Canadian soldier who was terribly wounded in the war and had been forgotten by his Government. Actually he went to Canada in 1906 to escape legal proceedings, and within a few months was sentenced to Imprisonment for theft. After other sentences there he was deported. During the war he served several ‘eras of imprisonment, sometimes for falsely wearing military uniforms and passing as a V.C. and D. 5.0.. On one occasion he posed as Hr. Norman Kendall, one of the principal officers of Scotland Yard. He never served in 4rmy. He was released from his last sentence four days before the present

fraud's, but while in Pentonvllle Prison undergoing a sentence he so convinced the governor thajt he was a victim of mistaken Identity and actually a Canadian soldier entitled to a pension that the authorities sent i to Canada for inquiries to be made, and the man’s fingers prints were obtained from the Canadian police, when the whole fraud was discovered.