’VARSITY MAN’S CRIME.

Waikato Times, Volume 103, Issue 17411, 25 May 1928, Page 11

’VARSITY MAN’S CRIME.

AMAZING CAREER. Incidents in the remarkable career of a university man, who was eventually reduced to selling papers in the street, were described at Wakefield QuarterSessions. Pleading guilty to a charge of obtaining by false pretences a chequebook and £35 belonging to the National Provincial Bank at Harrogate, John William Francis Burley, 35, bank clerk, was sentenced lo three years’ penal servitude. Mr Frank Ward, defending, stated that Burley came of an exceedingly good family, and was educated at St. John's College, Cambridge. During the war he enlisted as a private in a Welsh regiment, and served in France and Salonika. He gained both a commission and the D.C..M., and, after being wounded, was attached to the Intelligence Staff at Dublin Castle. In that capacity lie was prominent in resisting the activities of the Sinn Feiners and was responsible for several arrests. After being invalided out of the army, Burley went to the West Coast of Africa,.whee he contracted fever and became partly paralysed. Later he returned to England, and went before a medical hoard, but, as he refused to have a .leg amputated, his pension was stopped. He then returned to Ireland, where lie built a bungalow, but the Sinn Feiners, declared counsel, discovered his identity and blew it up. As a result he was injured and his servant killed. Afterwards his wife left him, and Burley finally found himself selling newspapers in the streets of London. Here again bad luck pursued him, and one day, owing to his lameness, tic was unable lo get out of the way of a taxicab. He was knocked down and taken to hospital, where he remained for several months. Counsel added (hat from 1923 Burley seemed to have drifted into crime.

The chairman, who characterised the case as a bad one, pointed out that it was not correct that Burley drifted into crime in 1923, for he was convicted of forgery in 1914. In passing sentence the chairman told Burley that he would be well eared for in prison.