East End News and London Shipping Chronicle – Friday 24 June 1955
Magistrate inspects church fittings
Poplar men found guilty of receiving
STATUES of angels, ecclesiastical vases, memorial plaques, a church bell, a font, a sacristy, and a weather vane, all alleged to have been stolen from a church at Eltham, were displayed in and outside the Thames Courtroom on Friday, and were inspected by the Magistrate (Col. W. E. Batt).
Roy Little, aged 18, general dealer, and his brother, John Henry Little, aged 28, lorry driver, both of Lochnagar-street, Poplar, and Vincent Patrick Keeping, aged 20, general dealer, of no fixed address, pleaded not guilty to stealing between May 7 and June 10 from St. Peter’s Church, Courtland-avenue, Eltham, approximately hundredweights of brass, copper and lead church fittings. valued at £60, the property of the South London Church Fund and Diocesan Board of Finance. six
They also pleaded not guilty to receiving the fittings. knowing them to have been stolen.
STORAGE
Canon Laurence Ambrose Brown, Southwark Diocesan Secretary, in charge of re-building war-damaged churches in South London, said that all the fittings had been stolen from St. Peter’s Church, which had been used for storage purposes for the last 14 years.
Det. Const. Stanley Evans said he found all the fittings at the address of the Littles early in the morning of June 10. In a bedroom in the house, he found Roy Little in bed, with his brother John under the bed. Keeping was hiding, doubled-up, in a clothes cupboard.
After questioning, they were all taken to the police station.
Roy Little told Col. Batt that he bought the fittings from a gipsy at Sidcup. He paid £28 for them and took them to his storage railway arch at Deptford. Because he thought they would not be safe there, he contacted his brother, who was visiting Woolwich, and his brother took them in his lorry to Poplar for safe keeping. John Little said that when John Little said that when they all got to Poplar, his brother and Keening decided to stay the night. When the police knocked on the door he realised that something was wrong and hid under the bed because he was afraid of the police. He did not know the metal was stolen.
Keeping said he helped to unload the church fittings from the “gipsy’s” lorry near Sidcup police station. From the look of the fittings he assumed they must have come from a builder’s yard.
“What, angels and plaques to deceased gentlemen and things like that?” queried Col. Batt, who said that there was no evidence of stealing against the three accused and dismissed the stealing charge. He found them guilty of receiving.
John Little, who was reported to have 13 previous convictions, was remanded on bail of £25 until June 25 and Roy Little and Keeping were both placed on probation for two years.