Ernest Roland Davis.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5360, 13 July 1885, Page 3

Ernest Roland Davis.

•> HIS. NEW ZEALAND CAREER. THE JUDGE'S COMMENTS. The trial of Ernest Roland Davis in the Supreme Court continued on Saturday till half-past three o'clock, when he was found guilty and sentenced to ten years' penal servitude ; also, to five years' additional penal servitude on the charge of forgery, of which he had been previously convicted. He seemed astonished at his sentence, and burst into tears as he was called upon to plead to two other indictments on which the Crown offered no evidence. As soon as the result was known, the people hurried out of the Court prepared to give him a reception on his leaving the building. He soon appeared, sobbing convulsively, Bupported on either side by an officer of police, and the crowd greeted him with hisses, groans, and ejaculations of " Praise the Lord !" and " Hallelujah !" Davis, to give the prisoner the name by which he has been known most recently, has had a remarkable criminal history. It is stated that he had a career of swindling in England, which probably rendered it necessary for him to leave the Old Country for New Zealand. He arrived at Port Chalmers in the ship Dunedin in 1883, and commenced operations by representing himself as a clergyman of tne Church of England and an agent of the British Imperial Sick Benefit and Life Assurance Society. This business not proving profitable, he removed to Waikouaiti, where he successively assumed the rdlea of a missionary to the Maoris, pastor of a church which he wished to build with the contributions of the faithful, and the ardent suitor of a single lady of independent means, who, however, repulsed his advances by the aid of the police. He next tried his hand at the temperance lecture business, and after preaching in the Rev Mr Ward's church and acting the pious young man generally, he induced a Mr Dyson to assist him in forming a branch of the British Imperial Benefit Society. He levanted with some i>lo of entrance fees, and under the names of Reade, Oliver, Davis, and Dr Montgomery, he lived on the credulous forjabout a twelvemonth. His doings in connection with the Rational Sick and Burial Association in Dunedin led to his having to leave that city in a hurry, only, however, to continue operations in_ Canterbury — mainly in the country districts. As agent for the " National Sick and Burial Association,"' a society which had no existence save in his own imagination, he victimised several individuals, using subscription books, &c, of the Rational Association, with the letter " R " in " Rational " neatly altered to " N." He made the came professions of religion whioh he had found so useful in otlier places, but he carried things too far, and one day found hinißelf in the hands of justice, which have just closed on him with a grip which, fortunately for society, is not likely to be relaxed for some time.

His Honor : Prisoner at the bar, you have been convicted on two charges, one administering laudanum and the other forgery, both cases, each in its own way, displaying an amount of wickedness, baseness and cowardice, and, I may say, brutality, such as I have scarcely ever listened to in a Court of Justice hitherto. I have had a difficult and painf al duty to discharge in doing my duty to the country by conducting the case so as to prevent you haying any excuse for Baying

that you had not had fair play. You have >■ endeavoured to defeat, browbeat, and ! insult the witnesses in the most thameful manner, betraying a moral obliquity and a kind of moral insanity such as i I have never seen exhibited before. | But after all, your apparent cleverness only ' j showed you to be an exceedingly shallow i scoundrel, because you convicted yourself ! over and over again. I look upon yo\i with j loathing. But happily society will be well i , rid of you. I should not be doing my ! , duty unless I gave you an exemp- } lary punishment. It is competent for me, for one of the offences, the one ' you have just been convicted upon, ! to send you to gaol for life. That you did ' commit a rape, I have not the slightest ' doubt ; but at the came time I think that i the course adopted by the prosecution | was an exceedingly wise one, because ! there were technical points which j might have enabled you to escape justice. Fortunately for society, this conviction has taken place, which, without the other, ■will have the effect of relieving society for many years to come, of the social nuisance which you unquestionably are. The sentence of the Court for administering laudanum will be ten years' penal servitude; and on the charge of forgery, on the expiration of those ten years, five additional years' penal servitude. And these sentences are anything but rigorous or severe considering your detestable conduct.