COSTLY JOKE.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20476, 30 November 1934, Page 8

COSTLY JOKE.

Woman Annoyed by Phone Calls. YOUNG MEN FINED £5. (Special to the “Star.”) AUCKLAND, This Day. Caught by Detective Brady in a telephone cabinet at the Ferry Buildings on Sunday night, when they were talking to a Devonport woman, whom one had annoyed over the ’phone for the past six weeks, two young men, William Wilson and Charles Robert Lowen, appeared in the Police Court on sumvv ilson was charged with assuming the designation o/ a police officer, Detective Watereon, and Lowen was charged with assisting, aiding, counselling and procuring Wilson in the commission of the offence. Both pleaded guilty. Senior Detective Hall said Wilson had been annoying a married woman in Devonport for six weeks by continually ringing her up and holding conversations with her. The woman was a stranger to Wilson, who had picked outl her telephone number from the book at haphazard. On one occasion Wilson telephoned her and said he was Detective Waterson. He added that he had just caught the two young men who had been ringing her up and annoying her, and said that one had confessed. “Of the Royal Marines.’* “These telephone calls continued up to last Sunday night,” said Mr. Hall. “A watch was kept, and on Sunday night Detective Brady and Constable McKlhinney caught Wilson and Lowen in a telephone box at the Ferry Buildings. Wilson told the woman that he was ‘Lieutenant Mahon of the Royal Marines, of H.M.S. Philomel.’ The woman said to him, ‘But you told me before you were Detective Waterson,’ whereupon he said, ‘Oh, I used to be.’” Mr. Hall added that at no time was any indecent or improper language used. Both accused had been quite frank about the matter when caught. Wilson said he did it for a joke. On every occasion that he rang the woman Lowen was in the box with him. If they rang up and found a man at the other end of the telephone they would ring off. Mr. F. K. Hunt ,S.M.: It is difficult to understand why they did it. Mr. Hall said Lowen had a list of previous convictions. Wilson had one previous conviction for being found in a common gaming house. Each was fined £5 or one month’s imprisonment. Time to pay the fines was refused.