COUNTY HOSTESS IN COURT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23103, 30 July 1938, Page 2 (Supplement)

COUNTY HOSTESS IN COURT

Guilty of Stealing Handbags From Guests at Hospital Ball

PEOPLE well known in Lincolnshire society the majority fashionably-dressed women packed the pu]blic gallery at Lincoln Assize Court when a county hostess was found guilty on the third day of her trial of stealing three handbags at a hospital ball. She was sentenced to six days' imprisonment, to run from the first day of the Assizes, which meant her immediate release. Before she left the dock Mr. Justice Asquith told her: "You have been convicted of a peculiarly mean offence."

IARGE photographs of a letter, signed "The Gang," received the police after the dance, were handed to the jury before they retired to consider their verdict concerning Mrs. Agnes Eva Tank, thirty-six, of Market. Rasen. After the foreman had announced the jury's decision, the judge turned to Mrs. Tank and stated: "To some extent you have already been punished by the ordeal of this trial, and you have a clean previous record. "In those circumstances I am able to take a more lenient course than I would feel bound to do." ills. Pank left tho court holding the arm of her husband, Dr. Harold .William Pank. She said that the result of tho trial would not affect her social activities, and she would continue going to dances. It was explained by Mr. W. K. Carter, prosecuting, that a Miss Dreurv, a Miss Scupliam and Mrs. Doig lost handbags at tho Hospital Ball at Market Pason. Mrs. Pank

and you pollico dident see us all though you are a smart lot a (t) Middle liaison and we are coming again at the meets dance but you won't catch us. Tho Gang, from King Edward Street, Grimsby." Mr. Carter suggested that the note was not written by an illiterate person from Grimsby, but by a person of "jnoro education." Dr. Wilson Reginald Harrison, of Cardiff, a Home Offico document examiner, gave evidence of comparing the handwriting in tho note with Mrs. Panic's writing. He stated that Mrs. Pank wrote tho letter "o" with a peculiar sweeping stroke, and in the note to the police there were several "o's" written in the same way. "Only about one in 500 people make 'o' in this peculiar way," Dr. Harrison observed. Dr. Harrison went on to say that other letters in tho note and on the parcel label were similar in some respects with those of Mrs. Pank's standard handwriting. "Assuming," Dr. Harrison continued, "that one in every four people wrote the same characteristics —and that assumption is very generous —the odds work out mathematically against a different person writing the note and the label and the standard letters at

helped one of tho women to search for her bag. The bags wero later returned in an unstamped brown paper parcel addiessed to "the liinspector, poleeoe station, Market Raisen," and posted in a pillarbox in the town. Inside was a note reading: "We are returning the bapgs. "Its money we after, not bnggs. We came in

somewhere in the neighbourhood of 100,000,000 to one." Dr. Harrison added that in his opinion characters he found on the parcel and a letter by Mrs. Panic, produced in Court, wero written by the samejierson. After the case for the prosecution had closed, Mrs. Pank's counsel, Mr. Geoffrey Smallwood, in opening tho defence, described Mrs. Pank as "a woman of excellent character, married to a well-respected doctor, and was the last person in tho world likely to commit a theft." Mrs Pank then went into tho witness-box and explained that, on the day of tho dance her husband was unable to go with her because lie had lost a brother. "I could not have stolen those handbags," she declared. "Because of tho number of people there, and because of going to an hotel for supper with friends afterwards with my coat open. 1 could not have got them away if I had wanted to." Husband's Statement Mrs. Pank proceeded to say that a friend took her to supper by arrangoment with her husband, and afterwards they walked home. On the night the parcel and note to the police were alleged to have been Eosted, she did not go out except with cr husband.

Dr. Pank told tho Court that when his wife came home after the dance sho had only one handbag, and if she had any others he would have seen them. "1 am able to provide her with any reasonable avumber of handbags she wants," Dr. Pank added.

Dr. Pank further stated that on tho night the parcel was said to have been posted, his wife was in tho house with him until they went for a walk together.

The defence next called LieutenantColonol Whitfield Mansfield, a documents and scientific investigator.

After describing his search for characteristics in Mrs. Pank's writing and tho note sent to tho police, Colonel Mansfield referred to the allegation that sho wrote tho note, and said: "1 can find no sufficient reason to say sho did

it and T found ample reason to say she did not do it." Producing a microscope, Colonel Mansfield stated that his examination of the writing showed a largo number of dissimilarities between the thickness of strokes and the formation of letters. Colonel Mansfield took his microscope to the bench so that Mr. Justice Asquith could examine more closely characteristics which had beeu mentioned. Tli" judge looked through the mieroscope at various exhibits, while Colonel Mansfield directed his attention to points 1.*,0 considered significant. With coloured crayons and a small baton Colonel Mansfield demonstrated on sheets of paper how the formation of tho letters varied. Mr. Small wood asked Colonel Mansfield his opinion of tho statement by Dr. Harrison that the chances of the two documents, the note to police and tho example of Mrs. Pank s own handwriting, being written by the same hand were one hundred million to one. ]ury Not Convinced "If I referred to my dissimilarities." Colonel Mansfield replied, "1 would say that the odds in my favour are a hundred and one million to one. For Mrs. Pank to write the note she would have had to do four things simultaneously. , , "She would have had to omit her own significant initial writing characteristic nud introduce a foreign initia characteristic, and she would ha\e had to suppress and omit her own inconspicuous characteristics, which she probablv does not know she possesses, and introduce, to her, foreign characterises. She must do that consistently "To do these four things together is, I consider, beyond human ability. The iurv returned a verdict or "Guilty," "and tho judge passed sentence as stated.