VICAR’S WIFE FINED

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXIII, 12 February 1941, Page 2

VICAR’S WIFE FINED

NOTE INSIDE NEWSPAPER LONDON, 10th December. The wife of the vicar of Horsford Norfolk, Mrs Kathleen Hogan, wrote a message inside a newspaper and sent it to a cousin in Eire. Norwich magistrates fined her £2O and £5 costs for doing so. The message began, “Dearest Cecilia—.” When Mr Ronald Keefe, for the Director of Public Prosecutions, began to read it the magistrate cided to hear the evidence in camera, “You deliberately wrote in the newspaper to get past the censor,” the chairman said to Mrs Hogan afterwards. “An educated woman, you were doing something which the country had decided should not be done.

“The information might have got to the enemy. You think your relatives are all right, but you don’t know how much they talk to people outside, or how much servants hear of what is going on.”

Mrs Hogan was also fined £2 for posting two newspapers to Eire.

Mr R. W. Eades, defending, said she was ignorant of the new regulations, made on 6th July. He hoped there was no question of the loyalty of the people concerned.