Mexborough and Swinton Times January 11, 1935
Hire Purchase Bicycles Pawned
Conisborough Men sent to Prison
A Conisborough carter, Frederick James Gaffney, and a Conisborough miner, Clarence Healy, were both sent to prison for one month at Doncaster on Tuesday for having stolen, while bailees, bicycles valued at £3 14s and £3 6s, the property of Barker and Wigfall, Doncaster
Cecil Middleton Neeson, collector and employed by complainants, said his firm supplied bicycles to prisoners on hire purchase terms on June 16. The bicycle were priced at £4 18s 6d and Gaffney had paid off weekly £1 4s 6d and Healy £1 12s 6d.
Under an agreement the bicycles were the property of the firm until fully paid for
William Edward Hodges, manager of David Haigh’s pawn shop, Denaby Men, said that in June 2009’s the visit brought a cycle to aim for pawn. They said they had purchased it for £3 7s 6d in Doncaster with pension money assured what purported to be a receipt. They advanced Gaffney 25 shillings on the machine. On June 30 the men brought another cycle, told a similar tale, and pawned it
Leonard Bassindale, quarryman, Conisborough, gave evidence of giving Gaffney an old cycle in exchange for his pawn ticket and of giving Healy 7s 6d for his pawn ticket
Gaffney said he wanted money quickly and though he admitted it was “a silly thing” to do, he made out a receipt as though he had purchased the machine outright. He had had a lot of trouble with his family through illness
Healy pleaded for a chance, “to square things with the firm.”