Court, before his Honour Judge Sir Havilland de Sausmarez and a jury, the trial was commenced of Jack Allen, a new recruit to the S. M. Police Force, on a charge of having unlawfully stolen six opium pipes and a quantity of opium, the property of Ying Kyung-oen, of No. 459 Tientsin Road, contrary we Section 2 of the Larceny Act, 1916. The charge arises out of an alleged visit of six Chinese and a foreigner to the house of the complainant on December 28, when it is stated that under the pretence of making a police search for opium the visitors secured a quantity of the drug stated to be worth $10,009.
The jury was composed of Messrs. J. Noble, R. M. Nobleston, C. H. Godfrey, E. Burrows and W. G. Crokam, Mr. H. P. Wilkinson, Crown Advocate, with whom was Mr. R. F. C. Master, appeared for the prosecution, and Mr. W. S. Levin-son defended.
In answer to the charge prisoner pleaded not guilty.
Mr. Wilkinson, opening the case for the Crown, described the offence charged as a' larceny, and after quoting the definitions mentioned in the act, went on to say that the owner of the opium was a pawnshop keeper. Opium, as they knew, was an interesting substance in Shanghai and elsewhere in China, but for the purposes of this case, for tke purpose of finding whether someone had stolen something or not, it Was nothing to do with them when the complainant obtained it, where, or why. As a matter of fact he bought it 14 or 15 years ago. Part of the means by, which the opium was alleged to have been taken was pretence that it was taken in the course of a legal search. The defendant, being a police constable, lent himself to a pretended legal search by means of which the opium was taken away. He had only been in Shanghai a very short time and had been through the war. The jury would hear that the defendant carried a piece of paper, and when some of the Chinese witnesses for the Crown said that they desired to know on what authority the house was being searched and the seizure made, the defendant refused to show it to them.
Whether the accused was very well up in the details of police searches did not matter; if his acts were such as would have helped in taking away this opium without authority he was acting fraudulently. The defendant's part in the matter was not a minor one. His presence there with six Chinese concerned in the seizure was an important matter and the evidence would show he worked in the search in such a way as to show he knew it was.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.