£10,000 FRAUDS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23690, 23 December 1938, Page 6

£IO,OOO FRAUDS

WOMAN STOCKBROKER Sentence of four years' penal servitude was passed at Manchester Assizes on Adela Taylor, aged 40, sharebroker, of Rochdale, who pleaded guilty to fraudulent conversion of clients’ money, amounting to £10,171 Mr Justice Croom-Johnson, passing sentence, said: “ I am old-fashioned enough to think that some allowance ought to be made for a woman, and I am making that allowance in your case.*' Mr F. E. Pritchard. K.C., prosecuting said that after the illness of her uncle, Mr Enoch Dawson, a Rochdale stockbroker, Taylor, from 1920 onwards, appeared to have complete control of the business. Her uncle died in December, 1937. At the date of his bankruptcy, in November 1937, her indebtedness to the firm was £84,267 There were 88 unsecured creditors to the firm to the extent of £58,826 Of that sum, £40.895 represented money paid by clients for stocks and shares which they never received. Mr T. Heywood, for Taylor, submitted that the conversions were due to a spontaneous act on a mad impulse. None of the money had gone on her own tastes.