PRISONERS’ PROPERTY

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1680, 11 May 1904, Page 23

PRISONERS’ PROPERTY

AN INTERESTING POINT. AUCKLAND, May 7. An important case concerning the property of prisoners was heard by Judge Kettle at the Magistrate’s Court. The Public Trustee, on behalf of a prisoner named Thomas Frederick Moore, sued the administratrix of the estate of the late Mrs M. A. Mills for <£loo and intei'est on an 1.0. U. The facts of the case were stated to be that Moore, who lived with Mrs Mills as her husband for twentysix years, was sentenced at Napier in 1902. for manslaughter; that Mrs Mills, when tried on a charge of perjury, about the same date, was acquitted. Plaintiff alleged that Moore, after paying off* some of Mi's Mills’s expenses, made over <£soo to her to keep in trust for him. Subsequently there was a demand for more money on the part of the defending lawyers, whom Moore at first refused to my. Mrs Mills urged him to pay, and she gave him an 1.0. U. for <£loo, but this, it was alleged, had never been paid. Mrs Mills died, and action was then taken by the Public Trustee to recover the I.U.U. and interest from the deceased’s estate. The defence was that the Convicts’ Forfeiture Act of 1871, under which the case was brought, applied only to persons sentenced to death or penal servitude. Moore had not been sentenced to deatu, nor to p en i servitude, for penal servitude \\as abolished by the statute of 1890. Moore was therefore not a convict under the Act in question, and the Public Trustee has no locus standi. Further, it was contended that an 1.0. U. could not be given as evidence of money lent, but only as an account stated. His Worship said the point at issue was a very important one, and he reserved his decision, v.