MENDING HIS OWN SHOES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21912, 22 September 1934, Page 3 (Supplement)

MENDING HIS OWN SHOES

DOWNFALL OF SOLICTOR THREE CLIENTS DEFRAUDED In order to keep tip appearances while practising in Yorkshire a former solicitor cobbled his own shoes and those of his family for several years. This disclosure was made at Leeds Assizes recently when Francis Robert Peers, aged 48—who once had an office in Bradford, but was struck off the rolls in 1932 after bankruptcy proceedings—was charged with the fraudulent conversion of clients' money amounting to £B7O. Peers had originally pleaded not guilty, but subsequently his counsel announced that Peers had accepted his advice that the evidence he had proposed to put before the Court, although amounting, perhaps, to strong mitigation, would afford no defence in law. Although the indictment charged a sum of £B7O, the actual amount the three persons concerned had lost as a result of Peers' defalcations was just over £460. Peers had not lived extravagantly and there was no question of drink or gambling. Peers was admitted a solicitor in 1907, and after acting as managing clerk to two firms of solicitors he began to practise in 1927 on his own account with the aid of an overdraft guaranteed by two brothers. In view of the textile slump and trade depression he had started at a bad time, and things gradually became worse. No action, counsel explained, had ever been taken by any of the people Peers had defrauded, and they had a good deal of sympathy for him. The proceedings arose out of the man's bankruptcy. Latterly Peers had been working as a secretary at a wage of £2 a week.

In passing sentence of 18 months' imprisonment in the second division, Mr. Justice Macnaghten observed that in such cases a sentence of penal servitude as a rule inevitably followed, but it was now nearly three years since the first of these offences was committed. During that time, no doubt, Peers had been suffering grievous punishment in his mind.