Monday, June 14, 1937

l “£1 Cash or... Smash,” Writes Boy. Monmouth Youth’s Anonymous Letter. Three Years in Borstal.

A 16-year-old errand boy of Monmouth was charged at Monmouth Assizes with uttering, and knowing the contents thereof, a letter demanding money from Mr. John Pitman with menaces without any reasonable or probable cause.

When the charge was read to him, the boy replied, “Yes sir, guilty.”

Mr. A. W. Cockburn, instructed by Lyne and Company, Newport, prosecuted. The boy was not legally represented.

Mr. Cockburn stated that on March 19 the accused posted an anonymous letter to Mr. John Pitman, a grocer, of Whitecross-street, Monmouth. The letter read:

“Money, Saturday night, 9pm, sharp. Dear sir - You have a very nice plate-glass window. With a brick we could do a lot of damage. Don’t consult the police or we will do it without the money. We want £1 cash or your window will go smash. Make a parcel of the cash and place it on a tombstone in St. Mary’s Churchyard near the sun dial. A friend will be watching your window. Don’t forget about the police and don’t be there yourself,a nd don’t let anybody else, cause of your window.”

Proceeding, Mr. Cockburn said that the police arranged with Mr. Pitman to make up a packet containing three marked coins. At the arranged hour, P.C. Amphlett was in hiding in the churchyard, and looked at a tombstone which was not the actual one upon which the parcel had been placed. The constable stopped him, and he subsequently made a statement in which he said he had written to Mr. Pitman “out of curiosity,” and had told him he wanted a pound “just to see what would happen. It was a joke. I did not mean no harm. I posted the letter. I told him I would go to a tombstone in the churchyard about nine o’clock on Saturday.” He added that he went to the tombstone and glanced at it “and thought I saw something on there and then I stopped to look. I then went to walk to take it, and then you stopped me. I am sorry to have caused all the trouble.”

Mr. Cockburn, further stated that the lad was sixteen years of age on April 22. He was charged at the last Assizes with wounding a woman who was his employer, with intent to do her bodily harm, and also with assaulting her with intent to rob her, and had pleaded guilty.

He followed her up a road after she had left her grocer’s hop, and from behind he struck her with a few blows on the head with some metal implement. A doctor said at the trial that if the woman had not such a good crop of hair she might have been much more seriously hurt.

For this the accused was ordered to receive twelve strokes of the birch and three weeks’ imprisonment. He had been at remand home, and he returned there. Pending the present trial he had again been in the remand home.

Sergeant David Maxwell, master of the remand home at Cathays, Cardiff, said the first time he was at the home the accused showed intelligence. However, he had a bad influence on other boys in the home.

On one occasion a chair was broken and, through the instruction of the accused, a leg was kept with which he was going to hit witness’s wife when she was getting food. Another boy reported this and prevented something which might have been very serious.

The accused: It is a lie to say that I had the chair leg.

Superintendent John Lewis, of Monmouth, said the prisoner’s mother and stepfather lived in Monmouth and, were decent people in rather poor circumstances. After the boy was discharged from the remand home on the first occasion, the then High Sheriff of Monmouthshire took an interest in him and arranged to get im to go to sea. Witness had made arrangements for this, and a doctor had examined the lad and certified him as fit to go to sea.

Addressing the Commissioner, the accused said: “I am very sorry. I was only done in a joke. I did not need the money.”

The Commissioner pointed out that the accused was under 16 years of age when the offence was committed. To the accused he said: “I do not find it easy to know how best to deal with you. Your present instincts are extremely bad and, if something does not intervene and stop you, you will find yourself spending the rest of your life in and out of prison., mostly in it. That is no prospect for any young boy of your age.”

The accused: No sir.

The Commissioner: I am giving you a chance to prevent that. We cannot make you behave yourself, but we can punish you, but I will give you a chance of pulling straight. The boy was ordered to go to a Borstal institution for three years.

When he heard the decision, the accused said: “Isn’t three months long enough in a remand home?”