NO HOPE OF CURE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21646, 17 May 1932, Page 7

NO HOPE OF CURE

WOMAN'S SHOPLIFTING MANIA. , LONDON, May 6. A wealthy woman, the wife of a Government official, was before the Marylebone magistrate on a charge of shoplifting. The defendant was stated to have recently come into a fortune of £BOOO on the death of her mother. She pleaded guilty to stealing two lace slips, one pair pyjamas, four dress shields, four sleeve shields, oatcake, 11b butter, jar of herring roe, two combs, five packets of biscuits, two packets of nuts, a lemon, veal loaf, meat pie, tin of beans, and four bars of chocolate. The goods were valued at £3 12s 9d. Counsel said that in 1918 defendant was bound over for shoplifting and was again bound over in 1921. Dr Hugh Creighton Miller, mental specialist, of Harley street, said that he had treated the defendant since 1918. She was one of those unfortunate people of peculiar mentality who were perfectly irresponsible in the way of acquisitiveness for reasons which the medical profession understood very well, but, unfortunately, could not control. The magistrate: She is rather a dangerous member of the community? Witness: Very definitely so. The danger that her weakness would manifest itself again will always be present, and no sort of penal treatment will have the slightest benefit. Segregation was called for, he added, and had previously had a beneficial effect. Counsel said that defendant’s husband and her family had done everything they could to restrain her. They suggested that she should be segregated in a home. The magistrate said he was sorry for defendant’s relations, but he did not see why he should deal with her case in a different way from any other. He fined the woman £2O, or three months imprisonment.