WOMAN SENT TO GAOL

Taranaki Daily News, 11 September 1934, Page 11

WOMAN SENT TO GAOL

MAN LOSES £l5 AT A CABARET. LENIENCY FOR HER COMPANION. The two young women, Ruby Bulliffe, aged 26, and Olive May Fletcher, aged 24, charged on Wednesday with stealing £l5 belonging to Kenneth Haywood Taylor May, New Plymouth, appeared before Mr. E. Page, S.M., in the Wellington Magistrate’s Court again on Thursday, when their counsel, Mr. A. B. Sievwright, asked that the plea be changed to one of guilty. Originally the wohten desired to be tried by jury. When they came up again yesterday Ruby Bulliffe was sentenced to two months’ imprisonment. Mr. Page remarked that she had previous convictions for theft, breaches of probation and escaping from custody. Olive May Fletcher was ordered to come up for sentence if called upon within 12 months, and was also ordered to pay £2 towards the expenses of witnesses. An order was made for the return Of the stolen £l5 to the complainant, Kenneth Haywood Taylor May, New Plymouth. In asking the court to extend leniency Mr. Sievwright said all three persons concerned had a great deal more liquor than they should have consumed. For a man of May’s years nothing favourable could be said about his conduct that night. Counsel said May was free with his money at the table of the cabaret, and made it available to the girls,■ who had an idea it was something in the nature of a gift to them. In view, however, of subsequent statements of the police it appeared that they had acquired it unknowingly to May. Counsel said Bulliffe had three Con-, victions for theft, twd for breached of I probation, arid one for escaping from! custody, but as she had not been before the court for four years there was an indication she was trying to lead a decent life. Fletche- had never been charged with dishonesty before. She first came under the notice of the authorities h. ’924, when she was about 15 years old, and in 1925 did some wilful damage to the institution in which she had been placed and was given a term in a Borstal institution.