SWANSEA MAN’S FRAUD 

In August 1926, as published in the South Wales Daily Post, the magistrates at Bath were reported to have faced an awkward dilemma: a young Swansea man, Andrew Bertie Paton, aged twenty‑three, had been brought before them on a charge of obtaining food and lodging by deception. Paton, assuming the confident bearing of a motor‑car dealer, secured three days’ board and breakfast from Francis William Littlejohn, proprietor of a Bath restaurant, and then quietly departed without settling the modest account of eight shillings.

Paton, once apprehended, offered no defence. He pleaded guilty at once, admitting that he had neither the means nor the intention to pay for the accommodation he had enjoyed. The prosecutor noted that Paton had previously served in the Army and had already faced punishment for similar misdemeanours. His circumstances, it was said, had become increasingly precarious; he drifted from town to town, relying on borrowed respectability and borrowed coin.

The Bench, confronted with a man whose offences were small yet persistent, declared the matter “a problem for the magistrates.” With few alternatives available, they sentenced Paton to hard labour, hoping that firm discipline might succeed where earlier leniency had failed.