COTTAGE OF PLUNDER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 13948, 2 January 1909, Page 2 (Supplement)

COTTAGE OF PLUNDER.

DIVORCED WIFE GETS NEW TROUS*

SEAU BY FRAUD. Shxtekce of twelve months' imprisonment in the second division was passed on Mabel Carroll, an adventuress, who had victimisedmany firms in Bond-street and Regentstreet, at the Newmgton Sessions. Thff prisoner, a pale-faced woman of thirty-two, with curly brown hair and brown eyes, in pleading not guilty at the Lift sessions, admitted having written for and received the goods referred to, but denied that she had any intention to defraud. In prosecuting, Mr. George Elliott, said that the woman was the divorced wife of Major Carroll. The story of the frauds began last year when a man calling himself "Major Thompson" took a picturesque cottage at Clavering, Essex, where lie was joined by two women —one said to be his wife and the other tha prisoner, who was represented to be Mrs. Boileau, wife of a colonel of the Royal Artillery. Goods were sent by West End firms to the cottage. One day the thre< leftapparently to take a trip to town. They never returned. The maid waited ii vain for them; they forgot, too, anothei —the payment of the rent. The prisoner was a woman of education and of culture and refinement, and by reason of her position and intelligence was able to join with other persons in a common design ti! defraud West End tradespeople. After hei. arrest it is alleged the prisoner said: "I am going to take the responsibility for the whol< lot of things sent from London to Claverina in the names of Boileau and Thompson. 1 do that to save your time." 'Mr. Owes Thomas, of Gloucester Terrace, 'Rggent'r Park, proved that the cottage was'let fun nished at £1 a. week. Mr. Wallace, K.C. j| We all know these week-end cottages. Ma, Elliott: Yes. They are very nice to sta;r at sometimes, and sometimes they are nice to get away from. Mrs. Boileau, wife of! Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur Boileau, of th* Royal Artillery, said that she and her husband were in Mauritius at the time th» goods were ordered. Major Carroll, sha said, was in the same regiment as her husband. . The prisoner, who refused to go into the witness box, addressed the jury from the dock, and said that two years after her marriage to Major Carroll her husband divorced her. She had married again, and in 1904 became a widow. Afterwards she met a man who, she said, had been the cause of all* the evil since. An Australian then made proposals to her. "You can't," sho said, " marry without a trousseau. It would be impossible." But though she had ordered goods in a false name she meant to pay for them.