FALSE PRETENCES CASE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19638, 17 May 1927, Page 14

FALSE PRETENCES CASE.

WOMAN DEFRAUDED OF- £70.! OLD OFFENDER CONVICTED. SIX MONTHS' IMPRISONMENT. [FROM OCR OWN CORRESPONDENT.] . LONDON, April 8 A man with a bad record, and who, among other sentences, had served six months' imprisonment in New Zealand, appeared at the Brighton Quarter Sessions on a charge of obtaining £7O by false pre tences. This was John Thomas Hawtin, aged 62, a bookmaker, who conducted his own case. When the case opened, Hawtin challenged three women who were serving on the jury, and they withdrew. He also raised an objection to a woman magistrate who occupied a seat on the Bench beside the Recorder, but Mr. Boxall, the Recorder, ignored this protest. Outlining the case for the prosecution, counsel explained that Hawtin met the plaintiff—a woman, whose name the Recorder requested the press not to publish —on Brighton front on Christmas Eve, 1925. They had tea together at a hotel where Hawtin said he was staying. He told the woman that he had a big house at Lewes and more than £BOOO in the bank. He also proposed marriage, and she accepted him. Eventually, he induced her to part with her money, and said that he had backed a winner which would bring her £3OO. Subseqeuntly, he left her in the street in Reading on the pretence that he was going to draw her winnings at the local jockey club. The woman gave evidence, and was asked by Hawtin, "When you met me on the front, did you giv 0 me the 'gladeye?' "No,she replied. At this stage counsel asked that the woman should' Continue her evidence in a part of the Court further removed from Hawtin, who was. standing at the solicitors' table. When Hawtin objected to this, the Recorder declared, "If you don't stop, I shall order you back into the dock." Addressing the jury, Hawtin pleaded: "I have fallen into the net of a woman who gave me the 'glad-eye,' and I took it. lam a very rich man. I have a very large sum of money, f am now in the hands of the Judge and you good gentlemen—X like every one of you—and the Judge is one of the best. In the course of his address Hawtin broke down and sobbed. The jury found Hawtin guilty without retiring, and he was sentenced to six months' imprisonment. According to ths police, Hawtin, when only 13 years of age, was convicted of theft and sent to an industrial school. In addition to this he had 17 other previous convictions. Sentences passed on him for offences abroad included three years in France, three years in Germany, and six months in New Zealand.