MYTHICAL FORTUNE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21580, 26 August 1933, Page 9 (Supplement)

MYTHICAL FORTUNE

POSING AS PEER'S v SON

MANY CONVICTIONS FOR FRAUD TEARS IN THE DOCK Frauds committed by an elderly showman who posed as the son of a peer and the heir to a fortune were described at the . Old Bailey a few weeks ago when Alfred Bray, aged 69, was sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment for obtaining food and money by false pretences. According to prosecuting counsel, Bray had posed as tho advance manager of a well-known circus. Ho also represented that a prominent firm of solicitors was obtaining a legacy loft him by an aunt. On the strength of these representations ho got food and lodgings for six weeks from a woman living in Lambeth. He also got money by pretending that lie was appointing managers to a novelty show.

A dotective stated that Bray had ten previous convictions for fraud. In 1911 he was sentenced at the Old Bailey to three years' penal servitude, and in 1927, at East Sussex, to five years' penal servitude. He was released on licence from tho last sentence in October, 1930, and shortly afterwards he was employed by a man known as Prince Zulamkah in a show known as " Savage Africa." For a period in 1931 he travelled the country with side-shows of a well-known cirous. He then went to Manchester, where he committed two cases of fraud.

In 1931, while ho was lodging at Lambeth, he .K/ought. a young woman there as his wife. She was only 20 when ho met her a few months before, and he posed to her as a widower. He had, in fact, a wife and two children at Salisbury whom he had not supported for ten years. He told the young woman that he was going to America with a show of his own, and that a fortune had been left him. He courted her and proposed marriage, to which she agreed. * Bray obtained food and lodging from the girl'B mother —a poor womantelling her the same story of his mythical wealth, and got £7 from her under the pretext that it was required for legal charges. Her son, who was in India, asked her to wire him £7. Ignorant of the procedure, she spoke to Bray, who offered to send the money for her. He was given £B, but tho son never got the money. It was also pretended by Bray that he had an uncle who was a director of the Bank of Montreal, and that he was the son of a peer who had left him a large amount of money. Inquiries of the solicitors acting for the doad peer's estate revealed that nothing was known of Bray. Judge Whiteley asked how Bray had managed to evade arrest for two*years. Tho detectjve replied that Bray had travelled about from place to place. He had slept in Church Army and Salvation Army hostels, and it was difficult to locate hiin. Defending counsel pleaded that Br&y had had to give up his work for Prince Zulamkah because he was frightened his employer would discover that he was on ticket-of-leave and had to report to the police. 1 While Bray wris being sentenced he trembled in the <jlock and began to cry. . .