JOHN Hanson has been spared a jail sentence for fiddling Shrovetide funds to the tune of more than £20,000.
The 75-year-old former Ashbourne Royal Shrovetide secretary pleaded guilty to 15 financial crimes, including false accounting, fraud and transferring criminal property.
As secretary and treasurer of the Shrovetide committee, Hanson was solely responsible for all the game’s financial accounting for nearly 30 years. He was tasked with compiling the game’s accounts and paying bills such as insurance.
But in 2003 when solicitors firm Eddowes Simm and Waldron — of which Hanson was a partner — began to run into financial difficulties, Shrovetide funds began to ebb away.
However the court heard that he had been using funds paid into the centuries-old solicitor’s firm to clear debts from as far back as 1996.
It was a process the judge, Michael Stokes QC, the Recorder of Nottingham, referred to as “robbing Peter to pay Paul”.
Hanson broke down as his defence lawyer Justin Wigoder described him to the packed courtroom as “finished”.
He said: “He has lost everything for which he worked the whole of his adult life. He has lost his good name, his house, and he and his wife can no longer walk the streets of Ashbourne and it has had a devastating effect on his health.
“In 1996, at the age of 62, here is a man that had nothing, no pension and no financial security — who has to carry on working to keep going.
“He was the centre of attention in Ashbourne and wanted to stay there and while under pressure this totally nice and upstanding man committed his first crime.
“Over the 13 years, Hanson, by his own endeavours, was keeping that firm and the other people in his employ, in work.
“This was not someone seeking voluntary bankruptcy to avoid creditors, this was someone chased into a position where he had nowhere else to go.”
Hanson steadily rocked back and forth in the dock at Nottingham Crown Court, frequently sipping water from a plastic cup he brought to his mouth with a trembling hand as he heard the case against him unfold.
Sentencing Hanson, Recorder Stokes took into account Hanson’s health, which had been in a decline over several years, and the health of his wife — who needed surgery but was advised not to go ahead with it unless her husband was around.
He sentenced Hanson, whose real name is Dawson John Hanson, to two years in prison, suspended for 18 months with a six-month electronic curfew, meaning the pensioner must stay in his rented cottage in Hollington between 7pm and 7am.
He said: “You were not prompted by self greed, but prompted by your desire that your standing in the community must be maintained.
“You carried on robbing Peter to pay Paul to keep your head and the head of your clients above water when it would have been more sensible to accept you could not continue.
“I would ordinarily pass a two-year prison sentence, but I have read witness statements and other material that underlines a man in his 76th year an imprisonment would have a devastating effect.”
