BANKRUPT SENT TO GAOL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13692, 7 March 1908, Page 6

BANKRUPT SENT TO GAOL.

AN INEXPERIENCED CON-

TRACTOR.

A CAREER OF LOSSES.

Walter Cowan, builder and contractor, of Devonport, who recently ft led a petition in bankruptcy, appeared before .Mr. R. W. Dyer. S. M.. at the (Police Court yesterday, to answer several charges under the Bankruptcy Act. The accused was charged with obtaining £168, £121, £75, £69, £15, and £15 from Briscoe and, Co., Ltd., 11. ('. Wick and Son, J. Burn? and (Jo., Benjamin Crawford, Alexander Thompson, and Peter Bryant respectively, when he had no reasonable grounds to expect that he would be able to repay the sums, and a seventh information charged him with failing to deliver up his books to the official assignee- (Mr. E. Gerard) when requested to do so. Mr. Baxter appeared for Cowan, and on his application, and with the consent of Mr. Selwyn Mays, who prosecuted, and Mi. Gerard, it was resolved that accused, who admitted the charges, should be dealt with summarily. Mr. Mays, in outlining the facts of the case, Raid that the gravity of the offence had been in no way minimised by his consent to nummary jurisdiction. Accused had been guiity of a series of offences when hopelessly insolvent, and had aggravated matters by declining to surrender his books to the official assignee. His solicitor and some of his friends had endeavoured to persuade him to comply with the assignee's demand, but it was not. until shortly before he came into Court, that he gave up the books. It appeared that Cowan had taken on one eontract after another, and Lisd only succeeded with on» of them. Successive failures had not deterred him, and the case was a flagrant one, in that accused had incurred debt after debt when he must have known that he had no reasonable chance of paying them. One feature which he regretted to have to mention was that Cowan " made a great show'' of religion, and that he would preach piety in the Sunday-school on the Sabbath and go and incur a heavy debt on the following morning. "The man owes £1000, and has got nothing," said Mr. Mays. Mr. Baiter stated that accused began as a builder and contractor in 1905, and inexperience seemed the trouble. He would lose on one contract and endeavour to make up the loss on another. Cowan was a man of excellent character, and had throughout been sincere in his operations. The whole of the losses were, stupid losses, made in the ' ordinary course of business, and it was downright stupidity on Cowan's part in not calling his creditors together after his first loss. Mr. Dyer: The amounts are considerable, are they not? Mr. Mays: Between £900 and £1000. Mr. Dyer: The accused has either acted in a wilful and deliberate manner or is so stupid that he is'not responsible for his actions. It is eithei a bad case or he is so silly that he has no knowledge of business lesponsibilities. Mr. Baxter said that he could understand it being a bad case if Cowan had been extravagant, but there had been no extravagance. Mr. Dyer, in giving judgment, stated that he could only assume that Cowan had business capacity, and was capable of conducting his own affairs. It seemed to him like a gamble— accused had waited for something to turn up. Fining him was out of the question, and he would convict him on each charge, on his own confession, and sentence him to six months' imprisonment on each, the sentences to be concurrent,