GENERAL THREATENED.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18632, 13 February 1924, Page 5

GENERAL THREATENED.

LETTER WRITERS PUNISHED. INMATES ;OF WORKHOUSE. At the Old ; Bailey, London, Robert Douglas", Carthew was sentenced to three years' penal servitude and Charles Evans to nine months' in the second division, on a charge of uttering a letter demanding with menaces the sum of £200 from MajorGeneral Sir Cameron Deane Shute, tail with conspiring together to demand tha* sum with intent to steal. ■ >' Major-General Shute, . according' to prosecuting counsel, received a, letter headed "Arthur Watts, ; Esq,,, c.o. Hammersmith Post Office." This document ran:-— :.:.• ' ■' ■ "Sir,We, the Camorra Secret Society, demand the sum of . £200. If oar agent has not received the money by the first post on Friday morning the man whom I have appointed will kill yourcharming daughter by November 18.' Please rend the in £1 notes. ; A man will ask for a registered letter, in the tuima oil Arthur : Watts. ':;.. We are watching your house very closely. Our: society saw the news of your; daughter's wedding in the English papers, so we decided, to demand the money with menaces. If you refuse to send the money you and your daughter will die, and it will not be » nice death. All our plans are complete." The letter warned General Shut© not to, 'phone to Scotland Yard or -police stations, and was signed by the "President of the Society. This letter, proceeded counsel, General Shute sent to Scotland Yard, and » dummy parcel was made up and directed to Hammersmith Post Office. The morning Evans was sees to call at th* post office and leave with a letter j and »•■ police officer stopped and questioned him, Evans said his name was Watts and that he had got a letter addressed to that name. At the police station he gave the name fcf". Evans, and added that a man in Fulhara Workhouse wrote the letter and asked him to call at the post office wfc a reply. It seemed that Evans had been an inmate of the Fulham Road , Workhousn sit the same time as Carthew, who was found by,the police to be in that institution. On being charged with having written the letter, Carthew admitted it, and said that if he and Evans could have got the monty * they were going to have £100 each. He : also said, "I was a fool to write that/letter, but General Shute is the man who" confirmed a sentence on me at a court- ; martial when I was in the Army." ' ■" Evans, giving evidence, said he did not know that Carthew had written : - a} letter to General Shute, and that he was. only an innocent intermediary of KtheWrtlbjer. z prisoner, who had p/vinised him a - few shillings for the job.. " ' , ' 'i - ; The jury found ifes prisoners guilty cl. conspiracy. ' , . '