WOMAN SENTENCED TO IMPRISONMENT

Southland Times, Issue 23953, 20 October 1939, Page 3

WOMAN SENTENCED TO IMPRISONMENT

THEFTS AS POSTMISTRESS (United Press Association) AUCKLAND, October 19. A sentence of three months’ imprisonment was passed by Mr Justice Fair in the Supreme Court on Nora Wallington, who pleaded guilty to the theft of £360 from the Government. Counsel said his client was a single woman, aged 54, who for the past 14 or 15 years had been postmistress at Raukokore, near Opotiki. She had come to be well known and much respected in the district. Her first act of dishonesty occurred four years ago when the house containing the post office was burned down. To cover the losses, she falsified the accounts. Afterward she continued to do so.

His Honour said, it was very painful to see a woman of hitherto respectable character in such a position. No satisfactory explanation had been given of what she had done with the money or why she took it. He saw no sufficient reason for departing from the ordinary rule that imprisonment must be imposed upon persons in positions of trust for repeated offences over a considerable time.