§ MR. HENNIKER HEATON (Canterbury)I beg in ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, with reference to the evidence given on the 30th January last by an official expert at Bow Street Police Court that almost all Post Office thefts were of postal orders, whether thefts constitute 85 per cent. of all convictions in the Return; whether the thefts in question are confined to a relatively small proportion of the employés; and, whether he will state the number of employés to each conviction for larceny in 1895?
§ * MR. HANBURYThe Postmaster General is informed that no such statement was made by the witness referred to, who appears to have been inaccurately reported. What ho did say was that many more postal orders were stolen than money orders, the number of which issued is, of course, less by many millions a year than the number of postal orders. It is the fact that the convictions for theft of postal packets in 1894 amounted to 85 per cent. of the total number of convictions, but the thefts included all kinds of postal packets, and not only letters containing postal orders. The 1151 persons engaged in dealing with postal packets, among whom the thefts occur, comprise some three-fourths of the whole staff. But I am glad to think that the proportion of the staff guilty of dishonesty is very small. In 1895 the number of convictions for the larceny of postal packets was, roughly, one for every 2,500 persons employed.