FALSE PRETENCE ADMITTED

Taranaki Daily News, 15 January 1931, Page 2

FALSE PRETENCE ADMITTED

TRAIN FARE AND TENNIS CLOTHES MAN IN NEW PLYMOUTH COURT. A young man named Alexander Edward Skeilling pleaded guilty at the New Plymouth Police Court yesterday to charges of obtaining credit with intent to defraud and. of obtaining goods by false pretences. He elected to be dealt with summarily. Sentence was deferred until this morning. The charges were in respect to the value of the railway fare from Wellington to Wnitara, £1 Cs lid on November 27 and goods to the value of £4. 10s 9d procured from Joseph Mahar at New Plymouth. Detective Meiklejohn, who prosecuted, explained that Skeilling had secured a passage from Wellington to Waitara on tho train by telling the guards that he had been robbed of his wallet containing his money and the railway -ticket on the boat coming from Christchurch the previous evening. He had since admitted he had told that tale h. order to travel to Waitara in search of work. He went into Mahar's shop and stated he had been employed by the Union Steam Ship Company at Christchurch and had made arrangements with Mrs. Watson, with whom he was staying, for the goods. He obtained a blazer, a pair of white tennis trousers, white shoes, a canoe shirt and a belt, a ll of which had since been recovered except the shoes, which he stated had been lost and hsd been replaced by a pair procured from a local firm and not paid for. Skeilling had since obtained £2 from a young man by false pretences, the detective alleged, but there was no charge against him for that, and he had been obtaining credit at various places in Waitara. In 1928 he had been sentenced to three years Borstal detention and had been released on license in 1929. That license was automatically cancelled and he would have to o-o 'back to serve the balance o his te'rm, which expired in March, 1931,