TAMPERING WITH WIRES

Northern Advocate, 18 April 1932, Page 2

TAMPERING WITH WIRES

A GROWING ABUSE

THEFT OF POWER

(Special {to ’“Northern Advocate.’’) TE AROHA, Saturday.

Two fines, totalling' £4O, with costs, were imposed Tiy Mr F, W, Platts, S.M., on Edward S. Thomas, for tampering with electric wires and fraudulently extracting power. Counsel for the Thames Valley Power Board said the practice of tampering with electrical fuses was growing, and asked that a heavy penalty be inflicted. The board estimated its losses from this source to be about £3OOO annually. The defendant was the manager of a transport company, which ran ten cars. In the garage were several heating points, two radiator points, a battery charger, a pump motor and 24 lights. The theft was perpetrated by moans of a contrivance which cut out the meters entirely,- and could be manipulated simply by the pulling of a string alongside defendant’s desk.

The board’s engineer, Mr G. P. Lindsay, said that the device was the most ingenious he had ever seen, and enabled the operator of it to take as much power as he wished by the simple manipulation of a string. The person who performed the connections did so at the risk of his life, as he wmrked on the wires when they were “alive.” Should the board’s officers approach and desire to make an inspection the string w r as simply lugged and the metre would then function in the normal way.

Reginald Sprague, the board's man-ager-secretary, said that though Thomas had taken the whole of the responsibility on himself, it was obvious that a competent man had advised him.

Counsel for the defence said the device had been used only to benefit the company. Defendant had evidently been carried away by the ingenuity of his own invention, and the exposure would serve as a. stern lesson to him. Counsel pleaded, in view of these facts, that the penalty be a monetary one.

The magistrate said the case would justify imprisonment, but as it was defendant’s first offence, a fine would be imposed. The defendant would be filled the maximum of £2O on each charge.