JEKYLL AND HYDE LIFE

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 150, 21 December 1929, Page 22

JEKYLL AND HYDE LIFE

£24,000 SQUANDERED

A man named Dumas, former Mayor of Bailleul,. has been sentenced to five : years' imprisonment at Dunkirk, writes the Paris correspondent of the "Daily Telegraph."" The main "charge againsf him was that he had misappropriated about 3,000,000 francs (£24,000) en-" trusted to him. He appears to have spent it in riotous living. - The story revealed at the trial showed—that Dumas had been leading a Jekyllarid Hyde life during the time he was in All day ; a sober and honest bourgeois, he pursued his busi-

mess of - manufacture"^ of enamel goods >nd-devoted'-himself to his Mayoral .': duties. In eight years he had made of Bailleul, which wa3. devastated by' the war, one of the most "charming cities in the North of .France, rebuild- . ing it in. Flemish style. When-night came,-however, ho was. another man. Dressed with the utmost elegance,-ho stepped into his car and - 'gave his chauffeur instructions to-drive' ;him to Paris in winter find Le Touquet in summer. • There in night clubs ' andi'eipensive restaurants he spent the ..sums^vhich had '.been .entrusted to his management. In three years ho runthrough the £24,000. In a final effort to recover his losses by gambling he. . jeame to Paris, lost the little that reniainfld, and then went, to the police -and- confessed. ■■■'■ ■