Corpun file 22649
The Mercury, Hobart, Tasmania, 4 July 1924
Youthful Desperado.
Imprisonment and Birching.
A Career of Crime.
PERTH, July 2.
In the Perth Children's Court to-day David Jack, 17½ years, who had several convictions since 1919 for stealing, unlawfully on premises, unlawful possession, breaking and entering, and escaping from custody, pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to three months' imprisonment and 12 strokes of the birch on the charge of having at East Perth on June 23 broken and entered the dwellinghouse of Ernest Hicks, with intent to commit a crime.
The facts of the case are that accused, with another youth, who escaped, entered Hicks's bedroom and extracted £31 from his pockets, but the owner bounded out of bed and recovered his money from the accused, who pressed the point of a useless revolver against Hicks's chest, and in the subsequent struggle administered severe blows on Hicks's head with the revolver, enabling them to escape. Hicks quickly recovered, and securing a revolver, fired three shots in the street after the retreating burglars, who escaped unhurt.
The accused had twice been in the reformatory, where a previous sentence of birching had not been carried out.
