SEVEN YEARS IN GAOL

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21296, 24 September 1932, Page 11

SEVEN YEARS IN GAOL

CANADIAN LAWYER'S FALL CHARGES OF STEALING WINNIPEG, Sept. 22 John A. Machray, K.C., churchman, lawyer and financier, aged 66, who is suffering from internal cancer, was sentenced to seven years' imprisonment on each of two charges of theft, the sentences to run concurrently. The case, was tried before Mr. T. M. Noble, S.M., at the Provincial Police Court.

After electing to have a summary trial accused pleaded guilty to stealing £IOO,OOO from the University of Manitoba, of which he was a bursar and chairman of the Board of Governors, and £12,000 from his former law partner, Mr. Heber Archibald. Machray was also Chancellor of the Church of England diocese of Rupert's Land, which has'suffered losses from the funds in his custody estimated at £172,000, but it is believed that no charge will be laid in this connection.

The investment and legal business of Machray and Sharpe has been declared bankrupt by Chief Justice D. A. McDonald, who over-ruled a protest by Mr. F. J. Sharpe, the junior partner, who claimed that he knew nothing of the condition of the university funds.

Machray was taken to the provincial gaol, where he will remain for 30 days before being sent to the penitentiary. Any appeal for leniency on the grounds of his illness must go to the Minister of Justice at Ottawa.

Machray's counsel, Mr. A. E. Hoskins, K.C., in a statement in Court, said that in pleading guilty Machray was not admitting theft in the common or ordinary sense of the word, but under the criminal code certain acts were made criminai"""under the heading of theft.

John Alexander Machray is a nephew of the late Archbishop Machray, of Winnipeg. He was born in 1864 and was educated at St. John's College and Manitoba University. He was elected a member of the council of Manitoba University in 1906. Formerly he was a delegate to the Anglican Diocesan Synod and was appointed chancellor of the diocese of Rupert's Land, 1907. In the previous year he had presented a pulpit to St. John s Cathedral, Winnipeg, in memory of his uncle. . .. After an investigation last month it was found that the endowment trust fund of tho University of Manitoba, previously reported to amount to about £320 000, stood at only £20,000, through thefts totalling £168,000 and bad investments. Subsequently tho fact that the funds of the Anglican diocese of Rupert's Land and of St. John's College, totalling about £250,000, had been seriously depleted, was disclosed , by the heads of the Church. They started an examination of the books following upon tho arrest of Machray, who was chancellor of the Rupert's Land diocese. Only about £50,000 of the Anglican fund -was intact. This sum was accedited to the ecclesiastical province and was not handled by Machray. The remainder of tho Church trust funds wa ß divfded between tlie synod fund, the bishop's fund and the St. .John's College fund. The St. John's cemetery fund was impaired to an alarming extent and the clergymen's retirement fund also was seriously i depleted.