PREVALENCE OF PETTY THEFTS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXXI, Issue 19, 11 August 1920, Page 3

PREVALENCE OF PETTY THEFTS.

AUSTRALIAN CATERERS HEAVY LOSERS. A clerk wag brought before the Police Court, Sydney, the other day on a charge of stealing a tumbler, valued at 10d, the property of a hotel proprietor. He pleaded guilty, and said that he was drunk; and he wag lined £3. The hotel man said that he had been forced to take thi-s action. The price of glassware had greatly in. creased, and thieving had grown in proportion. It cost him no less than £l2 per month to replace stolen glasses. The stealing of glasses is a most common thing in Australian bars. It |is usually regarded as a joke. He is regarded as a very great “nut’’ indeed who can show, in big room, a collection of tumblers bearing the marks of most of the big city hotels. It not only shows that he has a nice taste in glassware, and knows all the worth while hotels—but he must also he clever, for Boniface, who seems to have no sense of humour whatever in these matters, keeps a vigilant watch, and it is not easy to smuggle the articles away. But the real sufferers are the caterers. Even in the high-class cafes the people carry off the silverware, anything from a teaspoon to a sugar basin or teapot being acceptable. Mr Barry Lupino, the well-known comedian, gave a dinner in Melbourne th e other day, at a cost of £SO. Later \ the caterer claimed £56 for silverware which had disappeared—playfully carried off by Barry’s friends. Barry resisted the c’aim, but a magistrate allowed it, and Barry’s dinner cost him £lO6, plus legal expenses. Mr John Wren, the wealthy Melbournite, who is at present over in Perth trying, as a prominent Roman Catholic, to get Father Jerger released, recently gave a dinner to the poor of Collingwood, a Melbourne suburb. The caterer’s bill, in the ordinary way, was £250, and Wren paid that. Then the caterer lodged a claim for £298, being £2OO for extra guests (1930 attended instead of 1 £800), and the balance for silverware which bad disappeared along, with the bomc-go-ing poor of Collingwood. Wren re. fused this, and (the matter is now being fought out in the Melbourne Courts. It all links up with what some are pleased to term “th 3 economic confusion of the post-war period.”