WEAKNESS FOR EGGS

Taranaki Daily News, 3 December 1938, Page 16 (Supplement)

WEAKNESS FOR EGGS

RICH COMPANY DIRECTOR THEFT FROM A GROCER Though he received £1500 a year as director of companies, an engineer was said to have been seen to take three eggs, valued at 2Jd each, from a shop while the shopkeeper's back was turned. He was William John Barnett, aged 68, of Whitehall Court, South- West London, and when ' he appeared at Bow Street, charged with stealing the eggs, Mr. St. John Hutchinson, K.C., his counsel, declared that he had brought "irreparable rain" on himself. Dismissing the case imder the Probation of Offenders Act, Mr. McKenna, the magistrate, ordered Barnett to pay ?0s costs to the owner of the eggs. Detective Sergeant Hannan said the prosecutor, who kept a small grocer's shop off ihe Strand, on police instructions marked a number of eggs. "Barnett was in the habit of buying a small bottle of beer each evening at the shop, and on August 25, when I was concealed in the shop, I saw hihi take an egg and put it in his pocket while the proprietor's back was turned. "When I stopped Barnett he said, 'Yes, it's very silly of me. Will it mean rain?' " Sergeant Hannan added: "I told him that he had been seen to take two eggs the night before, and he replied, 'I am very sorry to say it's true.' " Mr. St. John Hutchinson said Barnett was a man of the very highest character. "He is a well-known engineer, both in Spain and in South America, and is a director of several well-known companies. "When he got home he hid the egg among others and no one in the house knew anything about it." Sir Herbert Lidiard, a solicitor, said he had known Barnett for 30 years and had found him to be a man of the highest and most punctilious character.