STOLEN PROPERTY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26582, 3 October 1947, Page 6

STOLEN PROPERTY

EXTENSIVE ASSORTMENT RAILWAYMAN COMMITTED FOR SENTENCE P.A. PALMERSTON N., Oct. 2. Pleading guilty in the Magistrate’s Court to three charges of theft as a servant, one of common theft, and eight of receiving stolen goods, Spencer Cuthbert Toon, a railway locomotive driver, married, aged 48, was committed to the Supreme Court at Palmerston North for sentence. On three other charges of breaking and entering into premises and committing crimes therein, Toon pleaded not guilty, reserved his defence, and was corrimitted to the Supreme Court for trial. The three charges of theft as a servant preferred against Toon related to goods stolen from the New Zealand Railways over the period June 1, 1945, to September 5. 1947, to a total value of £324. The goods involved in those three charges included golf clubs, golf balls, a golf bag, a radio receiving set, a car tyre, a .motor car seat, a quantity of pegs, eight new car tyres, a lawnmower, girls’ sockettes, razor blades, hair clips, hair nets, a bed sheet, face towels, cot blankets, working trousers, women’s stockings, plastic handbags, women’s shoes, singlets, cotton shorts, envelopes, note books! pest exterminator powder, electric light bulbs, glue, gumboots, grates, scythe blades, car pumps, grease guns, car tools, cross cut saws, carpenters’ tools, engineering fools, cement, fencing wire, and car wheels. _ The charge of common theft was that, between May and August this year he stole two large and two small wooden post blocks, of a value of £2 6s, the property of the Post ano Telegraph Department. The eigh. charges of receiving stolen goods related to property valued at £237 3S 3d and ranged over the period from August, 1940. to September 5, 1947. The goods involved included paint, polish, tea, condensed milk, cough mixture, bottles of laxative, bottles of breath sweetener, headache cures, shaving .cream, cake patty papers, braces, shoe laces, blind fittings, switches, valve connections, malthoid, a motor fan, a lantern, paint brushes, water taps, sports coats, motor tyres, single sheets, double sheets, women s slippers, sandals, a mattress, a car tyre, tooth paste, soap powder, crochet cotton. bed covers, girls’ shoes, sherry, hair brushes, butter, cocoa, cordial syrup, soup powder, wood bits, tenon saw, steel square and drill, tent steel planes, spokeshave, and other tools. Among the many witnesses identifying the property was William Andrew Scott, claims clerk at the Palmerston North railways goods office. It is his duty to deal with all claims for goods lost in transit by rail from Palmerston North. At the request of the police, he made an inspection of the goods at the police station, and for the convenience of the court he had prepared an inventory relating to cer tain of those goods which he claimed had been stolen from the Railways Department.