A SWINDLER'S CAREER.

Colonist, Volume LII, Issue 12724, 21 February 1910, Page 4

A SWINDLER'S CAREER.

Tho remarkable career of a mail who starfced"life as a soldier and after leaving the Army entered upon a strangely cliversiheel life of crinie was told at Berkshire Quarter Sessions at j.\ coding recently, rue man in puestion was Horatio Auckland, aged lorty-three, described as' an engineer, win) was sentenced to three years' penal servitude for obtaining a cheque for £7 from Mr. Mai tin JL'ayne, builder, of Bracknell, by false pretences. inspector Arthur Hailstone, of Scotland iard, in giving eviuence, said that the prisoner was born or highly respectable parents at Lewisham. He enlisted in the Grenadier Guards, and after three desertions and receiving 294 days' imprisonment was discharged as worthless and incorrigible. Buckland then commenced a career of «rime, defrauding people in all parts of the country. At \val-ton-on-the-Nazo he promoted a concern called the Klondike Co-operative Prospecting Expedition, obtaining sums of money under the pretenco that he would take 'the investors on. au exploring expedition. At Porcsmouih ho iUlyortjsed' for "gentlemen to accompany him on a camping tour on the \Velsii Mountains at terms of thirty shillings a week, and received a large sum of money. At Bristol ho advertised a trip by the steamship Argo to Spithead to witness the coronation leviow, and received sums \ arying from £50 to £5. IVor the latter offence, and for comnutting bigamy, Jie was sentenced to three years' imprisonment. Then posing as a coal merchant in London Jie obtained hundreds of tons of coal from colliery companies, which he sold. For this he was sentenced to live years and three years' poliw supervision. """■ Shortly before his arrest on the present charge. Bucklaud communicated (Inspector Hailstone continued; with the Kussiaii Ambassador in London, promising to give all details of th© -savings oi colliers from England to Japan on the understanding that he was paid £50 down and £200 for every collier captured by the Russians. Lately posing as a constructional engineer ho entered into a contract to build a skating rink at Gloucester for £1,400.. He commenced the building, and had received £600 on account on the venture.