POSTAL OFFICIAL’S LAPSE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18156, 29 January 1921, Page 10

POSTAL OFFICIAL’S LAPSE

A PITIABLE CASK

(Peb United Pkebs Association.) CHRISTCHURCH, January 28. ‘‘Every person in tne Post and Telegraph Department is in a position of trust and under great responsibility. The public would not have faith In the public institutions if persons who stole letters were free to do that sort of thing without punishment.” These remarks jycre made by Mr Justice Herdman in the Supreme Court today in sentencing Adam Morrison Rattray, a postal employee, to three months’ imprisonment with hard labour for the theft of a letter containing £5. In extenuation. Mr Alpers submitted that Rattray had already been punished by heavy monetary loss. In three years he was to retire from the service with a pension of £215 per annum. He had been dismissed from the sendee, and had made a sorry mess of his otherwise unblemished career. Prisoner had beep a volunteer officer in Canterbury for 25 years. He received a salary of £320 per year, and was under no financial stress. He was occasionally addicted to drink, and in one of his “bursts” he yielded to the temptation to steal a letter which he knew contained £5. His Honor, in sentencing prisoner, said the case was a pitiable one, and he would extend the benefits of the Probation Act to Rattray if he could. His age and service record would be taken into account.