A CHEERFUL DEFENDANT.

Otago Witness, Issue 3808, 8 March 1927, Page 15

A CHEERFUL DEFENDANT.

r PERSONALITY IN COURT. CI IMS 1 CHURCH, February 28. A cheerful witness was Frederick’Wilson beh, when he .stepped into the witnessbox at the Magistrate’s Court to-dav to tell Mr H. P. Lawry, S.AL, his version of a complaint that he had disobeyed a maintenance order, and also of an application he had made for a variation of the order. As man to man he spoke to Mr P. Jones, Maintenance Officer, and to the magistrate, and to most questions that were put to him he prefaced his answers with a bright and snappv “Eh?’’ “Mr Jones,” he asserted, “put me in gaol for a .fortnight once, and stated that he would break me in.” When the question of payments and wages was gone into it was' found that Bell claimed that he earned only about £145 a year, yet had paid his wife much more than that. He claimed that it was the Maintenance Officer's fault that the figures showed this remarkable position. Mr Jones: I don t want anv insulting remarks from you at all. ’ ” “No? I don’t want any from you, either. You as good as called 'me a liar. There are the figures of what I earned.’’ “No. I don’t jolly well bother with backing horses at all,” said Bell; and to a question about some investments: “Don’t you start kidding me them tales at all.” He had no money saved, he said, and was not holding anything back from the court. “It’s no use having an order 5 for £2 10s a week against me, because I can’t pay it,’ 5 he declared, with an nir of finality. After a good deal of breezy cross-talk the Magistrate dismissed the complaint of disobeying a maintenance order, and varied the order to £2 a week.