THEFT OF BOOTS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17009, 6 April 1923, Page 7

THEFT OF BOOTS.

YOUNG MAN’S OFFENCE.

BANEFUL INFLUENCE OF OLDER MAN ALLEGED.

A somewhat strange case, in which, it was claimed, a young man seventeen years of age came under the baneful influence of an older man, named Sayers, thirty years of age, and stole large quantities of boots from his employers, passing many of them over yo Sayers, was? before the Supreme Court today, when the prisoner came up for sentence before his Honor Mr Justice Adams.

Mr C. S. Thomas, who appeared for the young man, said that his parents I were respectable, and he had many j brothers and sisters. He began work j with his present employers when he j was fifteen or six teen years of age. Sayers, who had worked in the same j building, seemed to have exercised an j unhealthy influence over him. The j thefts probably were due wholly to j Sayers, who was a married man, thirty The trouble began bv the prisoner | recognising boots Sayers was wear- . ing as belonging to the prisoner’s employers. Sayers frightened the prisoner by telling him that he would say that he bought the boots from the prisoner and that he had failed to account for the money. The prisoner handed over a large number of boots belonging to his employers to Sayers until Sayers left the country for Australia. Counsel j understood that Sayers was much I wanted by many merchants whom he had leit lamenting. The suggestion was that Sayers was the arch-criminal. Apart from that, towards the end the prisoner began to slide, and frequented billiard saloons and places of that character. The firm would take him back, not in Christchurch, but in the head office in "Wellington. Probation, under stringent conditions, should meet; the* CC Mr A. T. Donnelly, Crown Prosecutor, said that the probation officer re ported favourably. His Honor said that the prisoner would be admitted to probation for three years, on condition that he paid costs of the prosecution, £1 11s, that he did not attend billiard saloons m race meetings while the order was in force, that he did not stay out of his place of residence later than 9 p.tn. without the consent of the probation

officer, and that he submitted to the probation officer every week an account of his receipts and expenditure. Mr Thomas asked hi» Honor to order that the prisoner’s name should not be published, mainly on the ground time the prisoner’s employers would not wish it to be known that they had a marked man in their employ. His Honor said: “The application is made naturally enough. In case* of this kind, it is not desirable to yield to a. request like Mr Thomas’s too readily, but there seems to be good reason for it in the present case. The lad has been given ari opportunity by the gen erosity of his employers, and by suppressing his name it will help towards his redemption. T will request the reporters not to publish his name. I will not put it in the form of an order, but as a request.”