A DETERMINED CRIMINAL.

Colonist, Volume LII, Issue 12773, 21 April 1910, Page 4

A DETERMINED CRIMINAL.

A remarkable story was told at the Preston Assizes, when Joseph Whitehead (26) was charged with warehousebreaking. Inspector Bridgei told the Court that prisoner began a criminal career when nineteen years of age. Upon reporting himself when released from serving & term of three years' ral servitude, prisoner told witness intended buying a revolver and shooting himself and Detective Maguire. Prisoner followed them about for a month day and night, and the officers went in fear of their lives. Once, when Bridge was concealed near prisoner's back yard, in which were, amongst others, a coiner, two housebreakers, and throe recruits to the burglary business, he heard prisoner tell them that if they saw any likely houses for breaking into they must report to him. He instructed them in house-breaking, and told them to watch witness. Six recruits trained by the prisoner were now serving penal •servitude. On another occasion, whilst concealed in -Kibbleton lane, witness was discovered by a number of boys, twenty of whom ran to _prisoner's shop to give, information.^ The! boys were quarrelling as to who should be first to tell, prisoner, in order to secure the reward which-he offered for such information. /;"VV T hen witness told prisoner that two; of his acquaintances had got terms of penal servitude, prisoner replied thafc-they had done nothing to what he had done, for when he was at Portland he. reckoned- up hey had 'done' over 200 houses. .The chairman of the Bench said he would; waste no words upon prisoner/ and sentenced him to seven years' penal servitude.