On This Day, 16 February 1917

Birmingham Daily Post

Friday 16 February 1917

SOLDIERS CHARGED WITH FRAUD AT NUNEATON

SELLING POEMS FOR BIRMINGHAM HOSPITAL.

At Nuneaton yesterday, Harold Blood and William Harris, privates in the South Staffordshire Regiment, were charged with obtaining £6 2s. 6d. by false pretences.

Prisoners visited the Tunnel and Messrs. Stanley’s Nuneaton collieries, and were given permission to sell poems to the workmen on their representations that the proceeds would go to wounded soldiers at Birmingham Hospital. They produced a letter purporting to have been signed by Colonel Gregory, of the Birmingham Hospital, authorising them to sell the poems. John Charles Craddock said he assisted the prisoners to sell the poems, and Harris had his overcoat pocket full of money. Frank Voce, Proprietor of the Stockingford Picture Palace, said the prisoners told him similar stories, and he allowed them to sell the poems at the palace. They realised £1 2s. 6d. Police Sergeant Orton said he arrested the prisoners, and found they had no authority from anyone at Birmingham Hospital to sell the poems. Prisoners said they were selling the poems for wounded soldiers and both of them had been wounded twice. Superintendent Evans said prisoners had had 29,000 of the poems printed, and they had sold them all over the country. Prisoners were each sent to gaol for three months.

It transpired that prisoners, while on remand, picked the lock of the cell in which they were placed and escaped. The next morning they were rearrested at Arley by Detective-sergeant Hanseman, who was travelling by the same train to Birmingham in search of them.