Warehouse Theft: Caretaker’s Observation leads to Arrest: Guilty of Receiving: Leicester Wednesday, Magistrates, Mr. J. L. Ward (in the chair) …
Declaring that he found the articles lying on straw and that he was arrested while wondering what to do with them, Ernest Pinsent (36), general dealer, 13 Archdeacon Lane, pleaded not guilty to stealing from a warehouse in Church Gate about 1.45 p.m. on June 9th, five dozen pairs of ladies hose valued at £5 5s, the property of Toone and Wells, Ltd. There was an alternative charge of receiving the goods well knowing them to have been stolen. Mr. Bennett defended. Evidence was given to the effect that following a certain communication, a director of the firm gave instructions for observation to be kept on the passage leading from Bond Street to the rear of Toone and Wells’ premises. The caretaker saw the prisoner looking up at the windows of the building and then saw him enter the passage. Shortly afterwards he emerged from the passage carrying a bag. He was stopped and the caretaker discovered that the bag contained five pairs of ladies’ hose. Prisoner was then handed over to the police. Pinsent, in the witness box, stated that he entered the passage for a certain natural purpose and saw the hose lying on some straw. He put the articles into the bag he was carrying and went back into the street. As he was wondering whether to take the hose round to Toone and Wells’s office or give it to a policeman he was arrested by the caretaker. The charge of stealing was dismissed, but the magistrates found the prisoner guilty of receiving. The director of the firm then told the ‘Bench that a short time ago someone in Bond Street had seen a man carrying a similar bag to that used by the prisoner, enter the passage, and come out again shortly afterwards with something in the bag. They had also seen articles thrown from a window of the factory just before the man entered the passage. Pinsent fined £5.
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Referenced
GRO0272 Tiverton: Ernest “Pinsent”: 1889 – 1966