JUDGE REVERSES VERDICT

Stratford Evening Post, Volume II, Issue 356, 13 September 1933, Page 5

JUDGE REVERSES VERDICT

Two Sentences in Two

Minutes

A pica by a Flying Squad detect : vo that a man had been blackmailed into picking pockets caused Mr. Dummctt, the Bow Street magistrate, London, to cancel a sentence he had passed a minute before.

Gerald Nicholson, aged 53, a labourer, of Bexenden Street, N., had been sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for being concerned with others in picking pockets on the platform of Leicester Square tube station.

Detective Sergeant Higgs, of Scotland Yard, said that although Nichol son had been convicted, he had been Inquiries showed that he had been working honestly for a long time, blackmailed by a gang of pickpockets who had been using him to their own ends.

The magistrate then discharged Nicholson under the Probation of Offenders Act.

“If,” he said, “there is any pressure by these blackguards to make this man go back to a life of crime, I hope they will be brought before me, and I will see that they don’t do it for a considerable time.”

Turning to Nicholson, he added: “If they attempt to blackmail you or form you to do this sort of thing, tell the police at once, and if I can stop it I will do so.” Two other men charged with Nicholson were sentenced at a previous hearing to six months’ imprisonment.