CRIME IN OLD ROTHERHAM: Embezzlement in town pubs

Mann had been employed as agent for the past eight or nine years by the London, Edinburgh and Glasgow Assurance Company and was expected to collect premiums on their behalf. 

The first charge was that he embezzled money on March 5 from Elizabeth Parkinson of the Dusty Miller Inn on Westgate. A second charge was that he had also embezzled money on April 12 from Mrs E Wolliscroft of the Cleaver Inn, Wellgate. 

Mr Lawrence the company district manager confirmed that the prisoner had received from Elizabeth Parkinson £6.13s.8d and had only entered £1.1s.4d in his collecting book, leaving £5.12s.4d unaccounted for. He also produced a receipt dated April 12 1895 in the prisoners handwriting, showing that he had been paid 3s from Mrs Wolliscroft when she had actually paid him £3. When an investigation had been launched, it was found that he had embezzled large amounts of money totalling to somewhere between £40 - £50. 

Prosecution Mr A Muir Wilson told the court that the reason for bringing the case in front of the magistrates was to act as a warning to others. The Assurance Company had such agents throughout the length and the breadth of the land, and they had found it necessary to be seen to prosecute such thefts. He thereby requested the magistrates to impose such a penalty as they thought fitting, in order to meet the ends of justice. Mr Hickmott who appeared for the prisoner's defence, admitted that at the time of the offence, the prisoner had the full confidence of the company as an honest and upright young man. He had since very much regretted his actions and as proof he then read out a letter written by Mann after he had been charged: Spring Street, Rotherham, April 29 1895

To the Manager

“Sir, Words cannot express my feelings at this moment. I have no excuse to offer and words fail me. Any action you might have taken would not be any greater trial to me than the thought that until my dying day, I have been guilty of a very serious offence. I have six small children, and we buried two last year, and are penniless. I sold my things last week to realise the £7 I paid in and my wives friends are putting her and the children in lodgings in Sheffield. I can do no more than ask your directors to forgive me, not for myself, but for the sake of those children, I have loved and seen for the last time. F MANN”

Mr Hickmott told the bench that in view of the letter and what it contained, the Company had asked the magistrates to send him to prison rather than send him for trial.

Mr Wilson cross examined Mr Lawrence who admitted that several large sums of money regularly passed through the prisoners hands on behalf of the company. He told the court that Mann was not paid a salary, but was paid by commission which averaged out at about £2 a week. Mr Hickmott told the manager that the sum that Mann took home was much less than that, and that the prisoner had told him that it was more in the region of only a guinea a week (£1.1s).

Mr Lawrence denied that was true and said that Mann had in fact earned a lot more. The area he covered was in the town centre in a radius of about two

 miles from the Court House. He pointed out that because of that, Mann had no travelling expenses to pay out of his own pocket. 

Mr Hickmott then addressed the court at some length and pleaded for leniency for the prisoner. He pointed out that he was a married man with six children, the eldest of whom was not yet 12 years of age. He claimed that it was the need to provide for his family which had driven Mann into this trouble in the first place. He was fully contrite and had tried to borrow money to cover his tracks.

This had resulted in getting the prisoner deeper into financial difficulties by taking out a loan, where he was forced to pay large rates of interest. Mr Hickmott requested that the bench to be lenient with his client and to inflict as light a sentence as possible, in view of the prisoner’s previous good character. The bench agreed and whilst admonishing the prisoner for his lapse into dishonesty, they ordered that Frederick Mann was to be sentenced to just one month’s imprisonment.