Skimming scavenging department led to employee's suicide attempt

Frederick Bentley made $155 a week as the chief clerk of Vancouver's scavenging department in 1930.

But quietly, he was taking some of the money he was supposed to collect from civic services like garbage collection.

On May 26, 1930, an auditor raised some questions about his bookkeeping. So Bentley went home and tried to commit suicide.

His wife found him in the bathroom, violently ill after drinking bichloride of mercury. He was rushed to Vancouver General Hospital, where he lived five days before dying June 1.

“City Official Attempts Suicide,” blared a giant headline on the front page of the May 27 Vancouver Sun.

“In his capacity as chief clerk, Bentley had charge of all cash and cheques,” said The Sun. “His collections amounted to $6,000 per month.”

Questioned in hospital, the 42-year-old Bentley admitted he had stolen an average of $200 per month for the last four years.

In a statement, Bentley said his department had been understaffed for years, and sometimes collections were delayed.

“Because of a rush of work, Bentley said a number of bad debts showed on the records,” Mayor William Malkin said May 29.

“In order to make a good showing in his annual report Bentley covered some of these bad debts with later collections. Afterwards he admitted he kept some of the cash, and later made a practice of doing it.”

City council had to make a gut-wrenching decision — whether to fire Bentley as he lay dying in hospital.

“Grim tragedy stalked through the city council chamber last night,” The Sun reported May 29. “Ten aldermen sat wearily in their chairs, reluctant actors in a sordid drama.”

After four hours of a “long and tedious” agenda, council chairman W.H. Lembke said “almost inaudibly” that “we should have a resolution dismissing Frederick Bentley from the service.”

“His colleagues froze to their chairs,” said The Sun story, which had no byline. “In their minds floated the image of a man, lying in hideous agony on a hospital cot. Tortured in mind — tortured in body.”

Alderman Harry Degraves asked to delay to the morning, “when the investigating committee meets.”

Ald. Lembke said it had to be done now.

The urgency, said The Sun, was “if Bentley died an employee of the city, his wife would be entitled to a pension. If he were dismissed before he died (she wouldn't).”

Bentley was fired, and The Sun's reporter concluded “a grotesque race is being run in Vancouver today. A race between the fragile life of a human being, and the relentless machine of civic finance.”

When he was dismissed, Bentley was also cut off from the city's life insurance policy. But after he died, Sun Life announced it would pay his widow $1,500 anyway.

“Because of the faithful payment of premiums by the deceased, compassion prevailed,” The Province reported June 8.

In a coincidence on May 29, another city clerk was sentenced to 18 months in jail for theft of about $2,300 worth of meal tickets that had been intended for people on civic relief.

The owner of the Log Cabin Cafe was fined $750, or six months in jail, for helping him.

The Bentley affair came up again on June 26, when Malkin said accountants had found there was a shortage of $54,000 in the city coffers from money collected by the scavenging department.

In July, the Bentley scandal once again made headlines, when a deathbed confession by Bentley came to light.

The Sun “unearthed” a handwritten note by Bentley on May 31 that said: “I hereby withdraw that part of my confession which states that I was absolutely alone in the illegal conversion of any monies of the City of Van Scavenging Dept.”

Bentley's friend, Ernest Westmoreland, said Bentley told him he had sometimes given his supervisor, John Morton, $60 to $80 a day of the scavenging money.

Morton was suspended, but acquitted after the case went to trial in October.