ACTOR SENT TO GAOL.

Waikato Times, Volume 107, Issue 18028, 24 May 1930, Page 17 (Supplement)

ACTOR SENT TO GAOL.

“DIABOLICAL CONDUCT.”

PRISONER SWOONS IN DOCK. For a course of conduct which the Recorder characterised as “diabolical," a middle-aged actor, Frank Challoner, was sentenced to four years’ penal servitude •at the Old Bailey, and swooned in the dock as he heard the extent of his punishment. Trading on his association with a young woman member of a theatrical company in which he also toured the country, the actor played upon her credulity and fears to obtain substantial sums of money from her private acoount. Although actually in comfortable circumstances and possessed of a balance at the bank, prisoner pretended to the actress —known throughout the proceedings as “Miss A” —that moneylenders and creditors were pressing him, and that some mysterious stranger was threatening exposure of their secret life unless financial satisfaction was forthcoming. “You invented a blackmailer," the judge told him at the end. of the trial. “You used all your histrionic art in putting your troubles before this girl in order to get her money, and it was only when the police demolished your castle of mendacity that you pleaded guilty to minor counts in order to escape a worse punishment.”