A MISSING SUIT OF CLOTHES

Taranaki Herald, Volume LX, Issue 143788, 11 May 1912, Page 3

A MISSING SUIT OF CLOTHES

AN EX-PATIENT IN TROUBLE. AUCKLAND, May 6. Thomas M’Glynn on Friday was convicted at the Police Court of having been disorderly when drunk at Auckland Hospital. He explained that he had gone back for clothes that ho had worn when he went into hospital as a patient, and which could not be found when he received his discharge. At midnight on Saturday ho turned up again, with one arm in a sling and an expression of agony on his fac.e, the result of a fall, he said. The sister in charge soon discovered that the alleged injury was merely a fraud, whereupon M’Glynn smiled benignly and presented a card on which was written: “I want my clothe-s, and I won’t be happy till I get them.” He was told that his" clothes could not be found, but he argued and argued and persisted, till the police were telephoned for, and this morning he made . his second bow to the Police Court Bench, his introduction this time being a charge that ho was a rogue and, a vagabond, in that he had been found by night on the premises of tho Auckland Hospital Board. ' Sergeant Mackinnon represented tho impropriety of having scenes created at a place like the hospital, and called evidence in which it was suggested that accused’s mental balance was somewhat tilted. Then M'Glynn quietly went over the old ground of the loss of his clothes. He went into the hospital, he said, tho possessor of a suit of clothes throe weeks of age, the usual underclothing, and accessories of attire for head and feet, in addition to some papers of value to him. When the time came for his discharge, all that could bo found of His possessions were a pair of boots, a shirt, and “a copy of old Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat.” “I don’t know if that would cover my nakedness,” reinnrked the prisoner in a passing reference to tho literary classic.

M'Glynn stated that things in the institution were not what one would expect to find in “God’s Own Country.” Other patients had lost their clothes, and ho know of two men who had gone out of the hospital hare-head-ed, and two women who had left without frocks because their clothes could not be found. Ho suggested that people other "than those at the hospital had access to the property cupboard, and remarked that the sister in charge had repudiated responsibility because there were no keys to tiie locks. Personally, he had been accommodated with the loan of clothes, but he had no wish to.wear dead men’s clothes. Ho stated that he had interviewed members of the board, and bad been told that a special inquiry would be made into the matter. “And into my state of mind, 1 suppose,” he added. He was right this time, for the Bench adjourned the case for a week, during which time M'Glynn was .ordered to bo detained for medical observation.