EX-CONVICT’S FRAUD

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 77, Issue 263, 6 November 1934, Page 7

EX-CONVICT’S FRAUD

YOUNG WOMAN SWINDLED. A 63-year-old ex convict, who defrauded women he met at the seaside, was at the Middlesex sessions lately sentenced to five years’ penal servitude. George Henry Paxton pleaded guilty to three cases of obtaining money in London by false pretences. He also admitted 31 cases of fraud in different parts of the countryProsecuting counsel said that Paxton had perpetrated a rather heartless fraud on a young German governess on holiday at Bournemouth. She met Paxton casually on the front; they became acquainted, and in a few days he asked her to marry him. Ho told her that he had £4500 invested in the Bournemouth Gas Company. At first she did not accept his proposal, and went to London. Paxton followed her, met her again, repeated his proposal, and she accepted. The couple then began to look for rooms, and on -July 7 Paxton got £5 from her on the plea that his sister, with whom he had been staying at Bournemouth, had not sent his dividend cheque. A week later he said that it had not yet arrived, and he was temporarily in need of money. She lent him another £5 and he disappeared. Paxton, a sturdy, well-built, greyhaired man, handed in a statement asking for leniency, and declaring that he had had a hard life. The magistrate, when passing sentence, said that Paxton had been in and out of prison for 47 years.