ICE KING'S PATE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 14702, 9 December 1909, Page 7

ICE KING'S PATE

FIFTEEN YEARS' IMPRISONMENT.

UNSUCCESSFUL APPEAL Press Association—By Teleqrrtph—Copyright NEW I'ORK, December 7. The United Slates 'Supreme Court lias rejected the petition of Morse, who was largely responsible for bringing about the financial crisis of two years ago, for a retrial. He will therefore serve his original sentence of fifteen years. Th? sentence of 15 years' hard labour pronounced on Charles W. Morse, Ihe ''ice king," last November, was confirmed in October bv t.ho Unilo.d States Circuit Court of Appeals. The sentence cama at a moment when Morse, after four months of lil'-'H'l.y 011 £25,000 bail collccted by his friends, was triumphantly proclaiming the rehabilitation of lvis fortune,!. Worth £5,000,000 less than throe years ago, Morse, when a prisoner in the Tombs Prison, was forced last May to .to through the bankruptcy courts. Of .lis imnKiK? wealth not, a penny remained. His wife had pawned her .family jewels for £50,000 and his Fifth avemia mansion had been ransacked of all its art "treasures in the ett'ort to pay the mountains of debts which remained after Lis ininicnso fortune hai". been swept away in the tinauciid avalanche precipitated by the panic of 1937.

A month after his examination iii bankruptcy, Mora? was released on bail, ponding tho appeal. From the finance of any oilier country lis must. have disappeared. Instead. he returned to Wall street, routed .palatial oflices, and sine* then lias boon We.l'ki mjj' and day at tho exploitation of the extraordinary opportunities which this country furnishes men of his resources and connection*.

A sisfc amounts of his securities which had !>ce.n foreclosed were restored to him, and ho reacquired control of several steamship lino*, reorganised them, and announced that as the result of his four months' labour ho had made £1,500,000. tan-in? him only £100,000 in debt. Simultaneously with this announcement he .proclaimed that lie would never cuter the banking business again, Xow_ the Court of Appeals has dashed all h'.s hones by reaffirming the sentence of 15 years' hard labour.

llr.i Morse was Mtting by the side of the convicted " ieo Itinpr" when the judgment was pronounced. She cried. Ifo was unmoved. and reiterated his hope that tlie United States Supreme Court would upset the verdict. Pending Pile final appeal, Morso was obliged to take up his quarters ill tho Tombs Prison