Mr. Benjamin Greene Lake, partner in a well-known firm of
solicitors, was sentenced at the Old Bailey on Tuesday to twelve years' penal servitude. The trial was the inevitable sequel of the collapse of last July, when Mr. Lake became bankrupt, and it appeared that no less than 2170,000 en- trusted to his firm as trustees or as solicitors had disappeared. As a result of official investigations by the Treasury, Mr. Lake was put on his trial, the indictment containing no fewer than seventeen charges. The jury, however, were only asked to give their verdict on four cases—two of alleged con- version of trust fends to improper uses, and two in which money had been given to the firm either for safe custody or investment—and in three out of the four the verdict was "Guilty." Mr. Lake's defence—that he was all along un- aware of these defalcations, which had been committed by his cousin, Mr. George Lake, now dead, and that any irregu- larities for which he had been responsible had been done at his cousin's request—was incredible in view of his position, his ability, and his antecedents. Only a few years ago Mr. Benjamin Lake had been President of the Incorporated Law Society, and chairman of its Disciplinary Committee—which investigates charges of alleged malpractice by solicitors—and he was a man of wide business experience, and specially versed in finance. Mr. Lake's punishment is severe, but it is not out of proportion to the far-reaching nature of his offence. Filf has not only cheated and ruined many of his clients, but he has, in the words of the Times, "done more than any living person to diffuse a sense of distrust and suspicion injurious to a profession in the members of which we must repose confidence."
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