DANGEROUS CRIMINALS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22350, 22 February 1936, Page 28 (Supplement)

DANGEROUS CRIMINALS

YOUNG MEN SENTENCED MANY HOUSES ROBBED PLEA FOR LENIENCY FAILS " You are two very dangerous characters to be loose on society," declared the chairman at West Hiding Quarter Sessions, at Leeds, recently, in passing sentence on Archibald lhomas, aged 34, salesman, and Albert Bramhill, aged 32, motor driver. They pleaded guilty to a series of housebreaking charges, and were each sentenced to seven years' penal servitude. Both men, in spite of their comparative youth, had had adventurous lives in the realms of crime. Detective Sidney Foster, of the West Rising Constabulary, told tho Court that liraniiiill was taken to the United States as an orphan infant. . Thomas went to the United States in 1926. He failed in business as the proprietor of a petrol filling station, and was finally sentenced to 7 b to 15 yearn imprisonment for armed robbery. Ui that sentence he served onfy four years, when ho was deported to England. Bramhill, the detective went on, was sent to a reformatory in America as a youth for storebreaking, and later he received a sentence of from two to 14 years' imprisonment, which included early deportation to Britain. Shortly after arriving in England, however, ho went back to America as a stowaway, but was again convicted, and once more deported. Precisely how the two men came to meet was not known, but recently, on their own confessions, they had been acting together in England in a number of robberies. Bramhill had altogether 11 previous convictions. Outlining the circumstances under which the men came to be arrested, Mr. H. R. B. Shepherd, prosecuting, ex-

plained that Thomas broke into the house of Mr. Robert Gray Murray Matthews, at Harrogate, and stole jewellery to the value of £llO. He was, however, caught red-handed by a chauffeur, and after a terrific struggle, in which another of Mr. Matthew's menservants joined, he was secured and handed over to the police. Later Bramhill was arrested, and he admitted having been concerned with Thomas in breaking into two houses at llklev and stealing jewellery and other articles, to the value of £36 10s, and £37 respectively. Although there was no previous conviction against him in England, Thomas asked the Bench to take into consideration 39 other cases of housebreaking and kindred offences committed in Leeds, Tadcaster, Guiseley, Horsforth, Liverpool and Gloucestershire, mostly in 1934. Bramhill admitted 14 other chftrgcSi Thomas declared that he threw himself on the mercy of the Court. He had told the police everything he could in order " to square up the mess." He had a promise of work, and, he added, " I shall be getting married directly after my release from prison, and then

I hope to become a decent fellow.' Asked if he had anything to say before being sentenced, Bramhill, speaking in a broad American drawl, said: " No, nothing except this. There is a certain old lady who has a great feeling of regard for me, so I don't want her to know of this."