SPIRITUALIST’S FRAUD

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21952, 13 May 1933, Page 2

SPIRITUALIST’S FRAUD

A BOGUS BURGLARY QUEER STATEMENT IN COURT. A phrenologist and spiritualist charged with incitement to defraud at the Old Bailey, London, alleged that he was a marked man by the police because of a 14 years’ sentence he had received in 1911 for shooting at a police officer. “ I do not believe,” the Common Serjeant, Mr Holman Gregory, K.C, declared, “ that the police harass a man who has been convicted.” Accused was Cosmo Leon Kendal, 43, of Streatham Hill, who was found guilty of inciting Arthur Wilton Bayes to conspire with him to cheat and defraud an insurance company. The prosecution’s case was that Kendal approached Bayes, who kept a stall in Portobello road, and asked him to commit a burglary at his house, promising him £lO when a claim was made on the insurance company. Bayes did not commit the burglary, but later he read of a burglary at Kendal’s house, and he informed the police. Kendal put in a claim on the insurance company for £514. Kendal gave evidence denying the charge. He stated that in 1911 he w as sentenced to 14 years' penal servitude at the Old Bailey for shooting at a police officer. He agreed, in cross-examination, that he was sentenced to three years’ penal servitude at Limerick in 1924 for fraud, and to three months’ imprisonment at Tower Bridge Police Court in 1922 for “ using subtle craft by phrenology to deceive.”

Kendal went on to say that he and his wife had conducted spiritualist seances, and he had done his best to retrieve his past. Mr S. T. T. James, defending, stated that but for Kendal being a spiritualist lie would not have revealed in his evidence that he had been sentenced to 14 years’ penal servitude for shooting at a police officer. “He did that,” continued Mr James.

“• against the advice of his solicitor and against my advice, but he said he had been guided by the spirit world to lay his past frankly before the jury. The Common Serjeant sentenced Kendal to 12 months’ hard labour. After being sentenced, Kendal declared that he had a statement he wished to make. “On November 8,” he declared, “ when Inspector Roberts called on me in reference to the burglary, he knew I was the man who shot at Detective Inspector Askew and had received a sentence of 14 years’ penal servitude. He was prejudiced and suspicious. I am a marked man. It is presupposed I cannot do anything right. That is why I knew there would be trouble.

“I put in a claim on the insurance company to indemnify me against my loss, although my wife, who is a clairvoyant, told me not to worry about it. I knew mud would be thrown at me about opening a now spiritualist centre.” The Common Serjeant then remarked that it was wholly untrue that a man who had been convicted was harassed by the police. “It was your own stupid conceit,” he said, “-which led you to tell the jury you had been previously convicted. Had you taken the legal advice given you, the jury would have known nothing about it.”

Sentence, as stated, was passed, Kendal being told, when he put the question to the Common Serjeant, that he could appeal if he wished.