GAOL FOR LOOTERS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23968, 19 May 1941, Page 9

GAOL FOR LOOTERS

PENALTIES IN BRITAIN A JUDGE SPEAKS OUT LONDON, April 24 Sentencing Frederick Fountain, aged 32, a window cleaner, to ten years' penal servitude at Leeds Assizes for looting at Sheffield, Mr. .Justice Oliver said that his was one of the worst cases I that could be imagined. Fountain admitted 11 cases of looting. The Judge told him: "In every case the helpless and shattered houses on ; which you preyed have been houses of j the poor. You were earning £7 to £'J j a week by your legitimate occupation of window-cleaning, but apparently you found that looting paid you much better. It is absolutely shocking." Mrs. Florence Bennett, aged 40, mother of six children, who had associated with Fountain, was sentenced to J8 months' imprisonment. The Judge said she had allowed two of her children to go out looting with Fountain, and that her house had been turned into an arsenal for this looted property. Her son Cyril, aged 18. was remanded in custody to see whether he was tit for a term of Borstal detention. George Yates, aged '24, a deserter from the Army, who admitted nine cases of looting goods, valued at £B7, was sentenced to seven years' penal servitude. Since last December, it was stated, Yates had lived on the proceeds of robberies from houses where people had been moved away. After speaking scathingly of the "looting industry" of Sheffield, the Judge said ho and his brother Judges wero determined to stamp out this offence. During the day he dealt with eight looters and imposed terms of penal servitude and imprisonment totalling 38 years. Sentencing two soldiers to five years' penal servitude each, the .Judge said: "It was a cowardly and dastardly thing to loot unprotected premises which had suffered as a result of enemy action."