STAYED IN HOUSE.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20285, 20 April 1934, Page 5

STAYED IN HOUSE.

Three Domestics Face Unusual Charge. POLICE TAKE ACTION'. (Special to the " Star.”) WELLINGTON, April 20 ! Rarely are women called upon in the ' Magistrate’s Court tc answer charges i >f breaking, entering and theft. and i here was unusual interest in a case in vhich three domestics. Edna Florence joss, aged twenty-one. Florence Katharine George, aged twenty-three, and Margaret Grace Johnston, aged twenty, ivere jointly charged with breaking tnd entering by night a house m Brooklyn T errace and stealing from it ?oods and monev of the total value of ibout £l4 12s. Remarking that it was not an ordinary case ot breaking and entering. Mr E. Page, SM„ agreed with a sugges:ion by counsel that the charge should reduced to one of theft, and he convicted the three accused on that rharge (reports the “ Post”). Goss was sentenced to detention in a Borstal institute for two years. George to reformative detention for a period not exceeding three years and Johnston was idmitted to probation for twelve months. Mr A. J. Mazengarb appeared for Johnston and Mr R. Ilardie Boys for George. Goss was not represented. Outlining the case. Detective-Sergeant L. Revell said that Mr and Mrs C. A. Spolsky had employed the accused George as a maid until about the en< oi January, when they discharged he and left for Auckland. A few day after the house had been left unocci pied, George took the other two tc eused to the house, and the\ entered i and lived there for a week or more When the Spolskys came home am feund the place disturbed they ii formed the police, and Detective Rii chie traced articles stolen from th house to the possession of each of th accused.

Chooney Abe Spolsky said that he lift for Auckland on February 16, his wife having gone there previously. He left his house with all the doors and windows locked. When he returned on March l he found that the house had been occupied in his absence. All the beds appeared to have been slept in, there were dishes in the sink, food was left exposed, and rubbish, including empty beer bottles and rags, was all about the place. Annie Helliwell, who lives next door to the Spolskys, said that one night while the Spolsky s were away she noticed a light in the house. She went to the house and the door was opened by the accused George, who in reply to a question said she and her friends were sleeping there because they had nowhere else to go. A week later she saw George in the street and took her to her own house. She asked George ii she would write on paper what she had done when she was in the Spolskys' house, and George did so, writing to the effect that she had been staying at the house with two companions, all of them being out ol work. She had first got in through a window, but later she used a key. The witness said that George gave the key to her. and she did not see George about the place after that. The Women's Probation Officer recommended probation for Johnston, reformative detention for George, and Borstal detention for Goss.