LITERARY BURGLAR

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21763, 31 March 1934, Page 2 (Supplement)

LITERARY BURGLAR

STATEMENT IN COURT HIGH TALENT PRAISED ERUDITE PHRASEOLOGY A prisoner's literary effort was praised by Mr. Charles M/.rtineau, chairman, at Kingston Quarter Sessions, recently. It had been written by George Leonard Barnes, aged £B, signwriter, who was jointly charged with Stanley Robert Hookins, 30, labourer, with breaking and entering a house at liorne, and stealing rings and other articles valued at £6O. Barnes pleaded guilty, and in his statement said: " About eight o'clock in the morning of Friday, January 12, 1931, a casual observer would have discerned my comrado Hookins and myself emerging from the stately portals of the Epsom Poor Law Institution.

" No event of consequence occurred between Epsom Town and Redhill, except that we called at the domain of a venerated justice of the peace, and, having acquainted him with the degree of our adversity, wero promptly regaled with shepherd's pic of comely proportions." Tho statement continued that later ill the evening Barnes and Hookins becanio hungry again, so Barnes knocked on the door of a house at Home to ask for food. He added: " Receiving no answer -to my knocking 1 assumed that the proprietors had

departed in search of pleasure, and, acting on a sudden impulse, I forced ft window with a pair of scissors in my possession and entered the house.

" I then summoned my comrade Hookins, who, thinking I had received an invitation to tea, sallied blithely forth, but on observing my position his countenance registered intense consternation and profound deprecation. When I offered him an orange it was accepted with marked reluctance." " My intentions to invade the larder were frustrated owing to the apartment where that worthy closet is usually situated being occupied, according to the sounds emanating from there, by several capable members of the canine persuasion. Being anxious to retain my nether extremities in a state of preservation, i vacated the apartment in question, and acting upon an impulse went upstairs and purloined the artcles of jewellery. " After this we went to a field and examined the spoils, but being unablo to discriminate between the products of Woolworths and Bond Street, we decided to dispose of it, and forthwith interred it in Mother Earth." When this statement was read, Mr. Martiaeau said: "It is a great pity that anyone who has such talent and capabilities as the man who wrote it should bo in a dock." Barnes, who had nine previous convictions, was sentenced to two years' hard labour.