CLEVER RUSE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23400, 15 January 1938, Page 16

CLEVER RUSE

WOMAN BEING CHASED COMPLAINT TO MOTORISTS Chased by a postmaster whose suspicions had been aroused, a woman stopped three motorists, and told them he was trying tc molest her. She was arrested, however. This story was told at the Old Bailey, London, when the woman, Nellie Frances Whittingham, aged 39, and her husband, Alfred Whittingham, aged 47, Post Office Savings Bank clerk, appeared in the dock. They were accused of Post Office frauds. The woman was arrested after trying to get £3 on demand from a post office in Southall. She called herself Grace Neil, declining to give her real name.

There was a very good reason for this, explained Mr John Maude, prosecuting. She was, in fact, found to be the wife of a clerk in the Savings Bank Department. It was found that his handwriting was similar to that of the fictitious entries in a number of deposit books. He was questioned about it and then confessed that he was the author of the scheme. He had made the entries of payment, he stated, and carefully drawn the imitation impressions of the date stamp. He declared that some 27 different accounts were opened with 5s each, and that he,sent his wife to draw money from the accounts. His explanation was that he had bought a motor car on the hire-pur-chase system, and conceived the frauds to meet pressing debts and liabilities. At the time of the offences he was earning nearly £7 a week. In court he pieaded: "Deal leniently with my wife. But for me she would not have been here."

Passing sentence, the recorder, Mr Gerald Dodson. remarked, "I am satisfied no woman could have conceived this scheme, although the woman lent herself to''carrying it out." He sentenced Whittingham to 18 months' imprisonment, and his wife to six months.