BIG-LEATHER FRAUDS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3299, 18 August 1911, Page 3

BIG- LEATHER FRAUDS.

RISE AMD FALL OF A GREAT F! R !V!.

},IA.DE a NEW ZEALAND TRADE

Sentences of eighteen months’ imprisonment were recently passed at the Old Bailey on Thomas L. Knight, wharf manager, and John Bcwron, sixty-eight, Leather merchant, for conspiring to defraud .Messrs Booth and Company, of £28,670, money advanced to the firm of Bowron Brothers on the security of consignments of hides. Frauds involving £IOO,OOO were alleged. A remarkable sketch of the history of the firm was given by Air Muir in his defence. lio said John Bowron was the son of a provision merchant, and his early training was not such as to fit him for the financial control of a large business, such as Bowron Brothers eventually became. The foundation of the business was really the resiilt of the emigration of one of several brothers to New Zealand, the skin trade of which' country was practically created by this family. John Bowron acted as English agent for the brothers, and the business gradually grew until, in addition to tne Bermondsey tanning business, Bowron Brothers owned th§ Phoenix Wharf and a factory at Crayford. The annual turnover of the business for the last twenty years had exceeded £300,000 —an immense business far beyond the proper control of a man ot the capacity and training of John Bowron.

Bowron Brotliers, counsel proceeded, carried enormous stocks, and had very small canital, which probably never exceeded £35,000 or £40,000. Finance was the essence of the business, and unless such a concern was properly con-' trolled disaster 1 was certain to follow. As the result of high prices in the skin trade from 1906 to 1908 there accumulated in Messrs Bowron’s warehouses a stock worth £230,000, while tne firm’s capital was less than £40,000. BEGGARED B\ r BANKRUPTCY. Through the bankruptcy Bowron Brotliers liacl been absolutely beggared. They had made nothing out of the frauds, the real object of which was to keep the business going for the mutual benefit of Bowron Brothers and their creditors. The frauds covered a period of five years, at the end of which the creditors were £30,000 better off than at the beginning of it. In conclusion, counsel submitted that Bowron was an old man. not too clearheaded and was far different from the Old.nary swindler who set out coolly to pen petrate a fraud. Counsel for Knight, who is sixtv-five years old, told a sorry story. He” said ho had lost all his money, and had not benefited in the slightest from the frauds. In passing sentence, the Common Sergeant said that when the accused discoered their bankruptcy they should have filed their petition and not have continued trading with a sort of speculative hope that the thing would come right. In the case of John Bowron, the court accepted counsel’s explanation that that defendant had not been putting by large sums of money, his object being to stave off bankruptcy. The Common Sergeant said that Knight was liable to penal servitude, but in all the circumstances, and in consideration of the fact th-,i; neither of the prisoners was of the criminal class, the sentence would be eigliteen calendar months’ imprisonment fir each of them.