BIRCHING BY CONSTABLE

Taranaki Daily News, 21 October 1933, Page 9

BIRCHING BY CONSTABLE

EFFECTIVE PUNISHMENT SUPREME COURT JUDGE’S OPINION, YOUNG RELIEF WORKERS’ CRIME. BREAKING AND ENTERING A HALL. By Telegraph—Press Association, Auckland,. Oct. 20. “The most effective way in which you could be punished if the law permitted it, which it does not, would be to order you to be birched, not with the ‘cat, but, as was the custom 15 or 16 years ago, by a constable,” said Mr. Justice Herdman, when three young relief workers came before him for sentence on charge? of breaking and entering a hall at Pukemiro. _ i The prisoners were lan Cameron Colquhoun, aged 22, William Dingle, aged 21, and Donald limes Reach, aged 20. Counsel pleaded for leniency on account of their youth and said that perhaps they had been led astray by others on a relief job. The judge said that young men who were in receipt of charitable aid and that was what relief pay amounted to—must be taught that when they went to country places they were not free to commit crime to supplement their earnings. . .. , Dingle was sentenced to nine months hard labour, Colquhoun to six months, and Reach was placed on probation for "You were associated with these boys, you were foreman of the relief gang in with they worked and you supplied them with their jemmy,” said the judge to Albert Flewellyn/ also charged, with breaking and entering. In consideration of Flewellyn’s previous good character he was sentenced to six months imprisonment. '