The Sun.
London, England, 1867-10-17 00:00:00

FRAUD ON A FRIENDLY SOCIETY.

At the Manchester Police-court, yesterday, John
Cooke, coffin maker, and late the secretary of the
Manchester and Salford Independent Burial So-
ciety, was charged with embez.z.lement. Mr. R.
B. B. Cobbett, who prosecuted, said the society
held its meetings at the Royal Oak public-house,
Oak-street, the landlady of which held the office of
treasurer. The prisoner had been, the secretary of
the society for some time, and a person named
John Duggan had also till rec-cntly been one
of its collectors ; and unfortunately the manner
in which the business of the society had been
managed was such that the secretary and
collector had been depended on to check each other.
Thus, if the secretary and collector agreed to de-
fraud the society, instead of their being checks on
each other, the society was entirely powerless in
their hands. There was no doubt this had been the
case; Duggan had, it was said, gone to America,
but the members had got the secretary, the pri-
soner, and were now prosecuting him. The charges
were various in kind, and the amount involved
was large. [The defalcations, it is said,
amount to nearly £loo.] There were two cases of
obtaining money under false pretences which were
so clear that he should confine himself to them.
The practice had been when a person died for a
paper to be filled up on behalf of the claimant ; that
paper had to be signed by the claimant, the collector,
and the secretary, and on its presentation to the
treasurer it was paid as a matter of course. He
(Mr. Cobbett) had before him two papers of this
kind, in respect of each of which £5 10s. had
been paid. One of them, dated the 31st of July,
professed to be in respect of the funeral of Jane
Rowbottom, the claimant being Ann Rowbottom,
and the deceased in the other case was one James
Palmerston, and the claimant Mary Palmerston.
These papers were signed by Duggan and by the
prisoner, and the name of the claimants, who had
apparently merely affixed their mark, was in the pri-
soner's writing ; on presenting these Duggan ob-
tained the money from the treasurer. It had since
been ascertained that no such person as Jane
Rowbottom and James Palmerston had died, and
that there was no such person as Ann Rowbottom
and Mary Palmerston in Duggan's district. Evi-
dence in support of this statement was then called.
It appeared that the names of Rowbottom and
Palmerston were not in Duggan's collecting book,
through which it was the prisoner's duty to look,
in order to carry forward the deaths recorded
therein into his ledger. One of the society's
rules was not in, which required that before
certifying a claim, the secretary should see the de-
ceased's body, or a certificate signed by the registrar,
or a physician, surgeon, or minister who had attended
the deceased. The president, W. Singleton, stated
that when he questioned the prisoner as to the pay-
ment of a spurious claim in respect of a person
named Sellars, the prisoner said " he was aware of it,
but he would not have done it only for Duggan."
Witness asked the prisoner for the receipts referring
to the 81 funerals of that quarter, and he said he
had burned them.--Mr. Ambler submitted that a
case could not be made out against the prisoner, who,
he said, might, for anything which had been proved,
have been an innocent agent of the collector Dug
gan.—The prisoner was committed for trial.

MARKE TS.7-This day.

METROPOLITAN CATTLB.

To-day's market was tolezably well supplied with beasts,
which moved off slowly at barely Monday's currency.
The highest quotation was 4s 10d per 81bs. Sheep—the
show of which was only moderate—met a dull inquiry at
the late decline in value. The best Downs and half-breds
sold at 4s 8d per Blbs. We have to report a slow sale for
calves at late rates—viz., from 4s 2d to 5s 2d per 81bs.
The supply was rather limited. The best pigs realised full
prices; otherwise, the pork trade was heavy. In mulch
cows very little was passing.