A MOTHER’S SECRET

Taranaki Daily News, 20 July 1935, Page 10 (Supplement)

A MOTHER’S SECRET

LIFE SAVINGS KEPT IN A TIN TRUNK TTOW a lodger discovered a secret hoard, the life savings of his sweetheart’s mother, of which £420, nearly the whole of it, was afterwards stolen, was described at Staple Hill Police Court, Bristol, when Joseph ' Smith, 21, a pointer, Samuel Litson, 26, a plumber, George Sanger, 20, a labourer and Clarence Litson, a labourer, were committed for trial. They were charged with breaking into a house at Soundwell on fere-' occasions and stealing a total of £238. Rosina Bryant said she got to know Smith two years ago, when he painted the front of her house. He courted her daughter, and when he fell out of work she kept him for eight months. She had saved the money unknown to her family, and kept it in a cushion cover in a tin trunk in her bedroom. It was to provide wedding presents for her son and daughter and a nest-egg for her husband and herself in their old age. When Smith was, moving the trunk for the room to be painted he .'remarked how heavy it was, and she showed him what it contained. In June, 1934, she had £5OB in the trunk, but a few months later she found there was only £BO.