Cinema Raid – Bognor Regis Observer – Friday, 16 January 1959

TWO MEN ADMIT RAIDS ON LOCAL CINEMAS. The marriages of two young men were mentioned at Chichester yesterday week as the men stood side by-side in West Sussex Quarter Sessions dock. One of them, John Algernon Burningham (23). of 1, Uplands, Yapton. a Middleton-on-Sea coal merchant's son, was said to have had to get married to a girl of 16. The other, Terence Pink (22), of The Warren, Hewart's Lane. Rose Green, Bognor Regis, was said to have got married while on bail to a girl shortly expecting a child. Both admitted taking a car from Ford R.N.A.S. without permission. breaking into the Pavilion Cinema, Selsey, and stealing £37, and breaking into the Gaumont Cinema, Chichester, with the intention of stealing. Burningham, a man with two previous convictions, who asked for 15 other offences to be considered, was jailed for 14 months. Pink was put on two years' probation and ordered not to associate with Burningham. A man with no previous convictions, he asked for 19 other offences to be considered. Rejecting a plea by Burningham himself, and his father, for him to be given a trash start in the coal business, the Chairman, Mr. Geoffrey Lawrence, Q.C., said: "We cannot pass this over. Society has got to be protected. We take into account your four months in custody." To Pink he said: " I think you committed these offences due to some sort of psychological disturbances brought about by your relationship with the girl you have married at the time that you were under Burningham's influence." Burningham's tather told how his son had to get married when the girl was 16 and pregnant. He and his wife did not approve. Then trouble started. Now they were prepared to make things up and do everything they could for their son. Mr. C. J. Penton defending, said that if Burningham had not fallen out with his family he would have gone into the business and there would have been no trouble.