A BAG OF JEWELS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19505, 13 June 1925, Page 17

A BAG OF JEWELS

ALLEGED BOGUS ROBBERY. LONDON, May 27. “I ask the jury, having seen Stephen Pincus in the witness box, sometimes cringing sometimes bombastic, and always shuffling, to say that hp is a stranger to honesty and honest dealing, said Mr VV. A. Jowitt, K.C., in opening the defence to an action by Pincus* wife, Zella a wholesale jeweller, who is claiming £44,972 from Lloyd’s underwriters. Pincus," who is an undischarged bankrupt as a commercial traveller for his wife’ stayed at the Prospect Hotel, Harrogate', in September, 1923. While he was absent from his bedroom for IS minutes, answering a bogus telephone call, his bedroom was forced, and his bag, containing £45,000 worth of jewellery, rifled Tho underwriters offered £IOOO reward for information concerning the affair, and Samuel Natensohn, a Russian Jew, who had previously been sentenced to Hire© years’ imprisonment for housebreaking, and who had occupied the room adjoining Pincus , was eventually arrested. Ho was tried and acquitted. , Mr Jowitt, contending that the robbery was bogus, called witnesses whose evidence showed a prior association between Pincus and Natensohn. The hearing was adjourned.