ADMIRAL FINED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22630, 23 July 1935, Page 9

ADMIRAL FINED

THREW AWAY SPEED SIGNS “HAD A GOOD TIME” LONDON, June 7. Engineer Rear-admiral George Whittle Phillips, C.8.E., who was arrested on a warrant in Loudon, was fined a total of £l2 at Alccster Police Court, Warwickshire, for wilfully damaging motor traffic signs. <- There were three charges. He was ordered to pay damages and costs amounting to logns. Rear-admiral Phillips stood in the dock. He pleaded guilty. The warrant was issued at Alcester when a letter from him expressed his inability to attend. The valuation (£4 10s) of the damage to the three signs was too high, he wrote. The signs were quite illegal, he alleged, and he expressed the hope that “we should yet see Calvarys where these signs should appear.” A 13-year-old girl said she saw the admiral pull off a 30 m.p.h. sign and throw it into the River Avon, and a roadman said that he saw the admiral, throw a sign over a hedge. Police evidence was that at Bristol the admiral said; “ Between ourselves, I had a good time that day. I pulled down any amount of signs, and I put one into the river.”

• The admiral, through his counsel, tendered an apology for his action and for “ wasting the time of the court.” The chairman said that Rear-admiral Phillips had defied the Bench, but he had suffered through being under arrest two days and two nights.