Estate Agent avoids penal servitude

This appeared in the 3 February 1934 edition of Estates Gazette:

At Worcester County Assizes on January 23, Mr William Henry Mayo (57), an estate agent, of Malvern, was sentenced to twenty months' imprisonment in the second division for fraudulently converting to his own use money to the extent of £2,460. He pleaded guilty.

Mr RC Hutton (for the defence) said that Mr Mayo speculated in buying and selling properties, and the losses he thus suffered more than offset the profits of his genuine land agent's business. He was tempted to put the money of one client to set off the loss on another transaction, hoping that a successful deal would enable him to replace the money.

Mr Justice Finlay said Mr Mayo had misapplied what must seem to his clients very large sums of money. The gravity of the offence would more than justify sending Mr Mayo to penal servitude, but he would not do that, since he "was able to take into account Mr Mayo's age, his previous good character and the fact that he was not quite in the position of a professional man as a solicitor or accountant". [My emphasis]

Photo by Okinawa Soba via Flickr.