"THE WAY OF TRANSGRESSORS”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21976, 10 June 1933, Page 9

" THE WAY OF TRANSGRESSORS”

HOW SIN FOUND THEM OUT MATAURA POST OFFICE ROBBERY THE LUCK OF THE CHASE One of the “ glorious uncertainties ” of criminal life must surely be the unawareness of the wrong-doer of the innumerable factors and forces, many of them operating unconsciously, which are ranged against him in his offences against society. A striking illustration of this afforded in the reminiscences which have recently been indulged in respect of the Mataura Post Office robbery of 1803. Who would have thought that the commencement together of their commercial life in the warehouse of Messrs Sargood, Son, and Ewcn, of two young men, would finally prove the key to the solution of a safe robbery which had baffled the police of Invercargill for years? Yet this was precisely the case.

If Mr W. R. Bfugh, ,now of Messrs Brugh, Calvert and Barrowclough, of this city, and Mr R. T. Duthie, now managing director of the New Zealand Express Company, had not started life together in the same firm, it is doubtful whether justice would ever have been douoj iu the matter of the burglary of the Mataura Post Office on Christmas Eve, 1893. The whole story has recently been recalled as a result of the finding of an old safe.during the course of excavation operations in Bridge street, Mataura. It has been proved that the safe in question was not the one that was stolen 40 years ago, but the reminiscences it has provoked have brought to light interesting sidelights on the ultimate conviction of the guilty person. Briefly the position is that the police were for several years completely in the dark in regard to the Mataura burglary, and it is probable that the crime would still be shrouded in mystery had a young lawyer’s clerk not escorted a man and his wife up Esk street in Invercargill to the office of a justice of the peace, before whom they were required to make a declaration with respect to furniture destroyed by fire on which they sought to recover the insurance.

The young clerk was Mr W. R. Brugh, of the well-known Dunedin firm, and be was at that time in the employ of Mr W. Y. H. Hall, of Invercargill. A man, who for various reasons shall Le named Smith, called at the legal office of Mr Hall one day for assistance in the matter of the recovery of £75 worth of insurance on furniture which had been .destroyed by fire. The furniture, however, was insured in his wife’s name, and her presence and consent were necessary. She was brought from Tasmania and application was duly made for the amount of the cover. Mr Brugh was handling the matter for his principal, and, having taken proceedings to the point where a declaration before a justice of the peace was necessary, he conducted his clients along Esk street to the nearest justice. On the way the trio passed the premises of the New Zealand Express Company and chanced to attract the attention of the manager, Mr R. T. Duthie, now the executive head of the firm in Dunedin. Mr Duthie, having known Mr Brugh for many years, smiled broadly as his friend passed. His amusement intrigued the budding advocate, who on his return stopped, while' his clients went on, to inquire the reason for the amused interest of his friend. “ I was simply interested in your friends. Who are they?” he asked.

“ Oh, they’re a couple from Orepuki, Smith by name, who want to get their insurance on destroyed furniture,” replied Mr Brugh.

“ That’s funny,” replied his friend. “Have a look at this?”

And suiting his actions to his words, the manager of the forwarding company produced books, which disclosed that one, John Brown, of Winton, had entrusted to the care of the company six or seven packages which were at the moment held in store.

“That man is my ‘John Brown, of Winton,’ ” said Mr Duthie. The young law clerk smelt a rat, and suggested that the manager of the New Zealand Insurance Company should be informed of the alias. He did not perform the office himself, however, but acquainted his principal with what he considered a suspicious circumstance. The insurance manager was duly informed, and immediately set out for the Express Company’s office. Acting the Sherlock Holmes, he tried to satisfy his curiosity at the expense of Mr Duthie, and was told that if he asked his questions straight out and ceased beating about the bush “ like an amateur detective,” he would get all the information he wanted. So he came down to hard facts, admitted who he was, and heard the tale of the storages on Brown’s account.

At this stage Mr MTlveney enters the story. “ Aqting on information received ” he compassed the arrest of Smith, and 'by one of those unaccountable but not infrequent fortuitous circumstances which bless policemen and fools, Mrs Smith, who had been “ looking too long on the wine while it was red,” had contrived to make an obvious nuisance of herself on the railway station in her endeavours to'board a train for Riverton. A constable decided that she was a fit subject for arrest, and delivered her at the police station shdrtly after the arrival of her husband. Thus Mr M'llveuey had both husband and wife in the net at the same time, and promptly commenced work on an intuitive “ hunch ” that Smith w T as the Mataura post office robber. This “ hunch ” he had communicated to his chief in an hotel some time previously, only to be told rather scornfully that he was “miles wide of the mark.’- The culprit of the Mataura affair-, he was told very emphatically, was without doubt the central figure in the poisoning case which was then occupying the time of the Supreme Court. A man had poisoned his mate on Mr Donald M'Donald’s property at Edendale, and was standing his trial for the crime. Mr M'llveney was quite unimpressed and determined to follow up his own intuition. The presence at the station of Mrs Smith gave him his opportunity, and acting on the old adage that “ Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” he replied to the inebriate wife’s constant cries for her husband.; that Smith could be found in a down-town hotel enjoying himself with the barmaid. Consumed with jealousy, the angry wife fell an easy victim to the well-known suasive powers of her interrogator, and fortified by the illuminating story which Mrs Smith told concerning the happenings of Christmas Eve, 1893, he (Mr MTlvcney) found his way to the cell in which the very apprehensive Smith was languishing. He told his victim what he knew and suggested that the game was up.” “It sounds like a romance, don’t it,” was the reply, and then the Smith jaw set in a determined fashion. Moral suasion triumphed, however, and eventually the admissions were made which rendered a plea of guilty the only alternative open to the man. Court proceedings followed and the penalty was paid. The Smiths were a remarkable pair in many ways, and it is significant of Smith’s unfailing ability to look after No. 1 that the next time Mr Brugh saw him was in gaol, where he had managed to secure the job of cook’s assistant, out of the most sought after offices in

the prison. Mr Brugh was visiting the gaol to see a man whom his principal proposed defending, and encountered his old friend, carrying a tray filled with buns. Years afterwards Mr Brugh saw his last of a man whose conviction he 'so unwittingly encompassed. Smith was then employed in a track-laying gang in Dunedin at the time when the electric tram system was being established in this city. Mrs Smith was a woman of remarkable physical strength, and a very dominating force irl the life of her husband. At the time that she came into the limelight she was known as the only woman who had ever made the journey overland to Preservation Inlet, where she and her husband spent a good deal of time. She first made her acquaintance with the law when she was arrested at the instigation of Mr Brugh’s firm for debt, just when she was endeavouring to leave the country, via Bluff. She confessed judgment and managed to get free of her troubles, and ’as is so often the case, she and herhusband, when they found themselves in need of assistance, turned to their erstwhile prosecutors to see them through. Probably had they briefed any other solicitor in Invercargill the Mataura Post Office robbery might now be-one of the list of . unsolved crimes pigeonholed away in the police headquarters of the Dominion. .

The story merely serves to show upon what remarkably fortunate circumstances and events the long arm of the law frequently operates. It was a curious fact that all the time Mr Mllveney was entertaining the strongest suspicions of Smith with regard to the Mataura robbery, police attention was being focussed on another man of the same name, who had attracted attention to himself by his unusually large sale of stamps. Hc_ was ultimately proved to be completely innocent of any connection with the affair, and the police officer's “ hunch ” was amply justified.