TEMPTING TO THIEVE.

NZ Truth, Issue 108, 13 July 1907, Page 4

TEMPTING TO THIEVE.

Ihe tendency of the average drunk to pick up things that do not belong to him is earnestly commended as- a subject of analysis to the society of psychological research, or some such body that does not accept the vulgar "motive" of the Polioe Court as the mainspring of action when the brain is transfigured by beer. An unusually large proportion of theft cases before the Wellington S.M.s . Court of late have arisen through the temporary mental entanglement of the accused persons, who invariably hold good positions, bear excellent characters, and have practically no use for the articles borrowed. Not long since a respectable you-n-s man stole noisily out of a laundry with a bundle of washing and staggered carefully into the arms of a policeman-. Later an individual, who recollected taking fourteen beers, and probably took more, joyously lifted two bundles rof shirts from m front of an Ingestre-street shop and marched defiantly down the street with them. Last week a man with a ;wife and family who had been m good employment for .fourteen years, went on, the rarale and took the first thing that came m his way, and which happened to be some clothing exposed outside a shop window. It is true this individual was convicted of theft so far back as 1893, but his life since tiion had been most exemplary, and it is probable that 'beer revived the old Adam. What this paper desires to condemn with violence and invective is the idiotic practice of some shopkeepers who place goods outside their shop windows apparently for the express purpose of having them stolen. The practised criminal is usually sober, sobriety 'being, an essential factor m the conduct of his nefarious business, and he mipht hesitate about taking goods m full view of the passers-by ; but the unsober person has eyes for nothing tout the object immediately m front of him, and seeing no ens, like the ostrich, he "believes that be is not seen. The question of why beer should mate a mam or woman acquisitive is left to the/ learned Society mentioned' above, but the matter of leading the drunk into temptation should lie heavily on the conscience of the erring tradesmen. A week, or. two back Magistrate McCarthy condemned the practice; m Dunedin, find last week his Worship Riddel I s.ddsd his voice m condemnation at Wellington. The unanimous opinion "Truth" has heard expressed is that shop-* keepers who throw out .such pit invitation to the unsober public to commit crime deserve to lose their shirts nnd pyjamas, and things reduced to 3/11, if they place them und?r the unsteady feet of the person who has imbibed to excess. What is the City Council doing, anyway, that it does not. < n act a by-law to remove thesT frlorin 1 ?: obstructions to traffic; or if a by-law / exists, why isn't it enforced ?