WOMAN CONVICTED OF SHOP-LIFTING

Southland Times, Issue 23378, 9 December 1937, Page 10

WOMAN CONVICTED OF SHOP-LIFTING

TERM OF REFORMATIVE TREATMENT (United Press Association) DUNEDIN, December 8. Facing 12 charges that brought her total convictions for theft to 84, Leonie Evelyn Macmahon, a smartly dressed woman of 34, whom the police described as a professional shop-lifter, was sentenced to two years’ reformative treatment by Mr J. R. Bartholomew, S.M. All the thefts which, in the aggregate, represented goods worth £lO5, were committed in one week. Her counsel pleaded that her conduct was governed by abnormality, for despite earlier sentences she could not resist the impulse to steal. Chief-Detective Young stated that some years ago accused held a good position which she lost, since when she apparently had done little but shoplifting. She first appeared at Auckland on 22 charges in 1926. She was convicted at Christchurch on 42 charges in 1932 and again at Christchurch in 1935 on eight charges. The Magistrate, in passing sentence, said it was an extraordinarily tragic case of an educated, intelligent woman persisting in a career of crime. Her case would come before the Prisons | Board, when any question of abnormal- i ity could be dealt with.