Robert Greenwood Tarran

Robert Greenwood Tarran (1892 – 20 September 1955)^[1][2] of Kingston upon Hull was a civil engineering contractor and managing director of Tarran Industries, Ltd.^[3] He was an elected member of Hull City Council and served as Sheriff of Hull and as its chief Air Raid Warden during the war.^[4] He also organised the evacuation of civilians from Hull.^[4] His popularity in the city was considerable.^[4]

In August 1941, he officially welcomed the King and Queen to the City.^[4]

In December 1947, he was convicted of making and publishing a false statement in the company's 1943 balance sheet, and sentenced to nine months hard labour.^[3] The conviction was quashed on appeal^[4] four months later.^[5] Before the success of his appeal he founded another business in Scotland but he still spent time in Hull, and died there on 20 September 1955.^[1][2]

Tarran held a number of patents.^[6]

Tarran Industries

The Regal Cinema, Hull, built by Tarran in 1934, demolished c. 2005

Tarran created his company from scratch, and it eventually employed 10,000 people.^[4] Working under contract to the Ministry of Defence, the company also constructed airfields and coastal defences,^[4] in addition to its civil contracts.

The company designed and made prefabricated houses during World War II,^[4] almost 20,000 of which were erected during the latter years of, and immediately after, the war^[4] under the Housing (Temporary Accommodation) Act 1944.

Trial

Tarran's conviction followed first a 44-day hearing before Hull's stipendiary magistrate, after which Tarran, who pleaded not guilty, was granted bail at £100,^[7] then a 32-day special Assizes hearing at Hull Guildhall, in front of Mr Justice Pritchard.^[3]

Tarran faced six charges: making and publishing the company's 1942 balance sheet and of conspiring with Herbert Bland Southern (assistant to the general manager for contracts, aged 64 at the time^[8]) to publish it; and the same for the 1943 balance sheet.^[8] Southern was charged with both counts of conspiracy.^[8]

Sentence was passed on 3 December 1947.^[8] The jury deliberated for four hours and two minutes,^[3] and Pritchard told them that he would asked that they not be called for jury service again.^[3] Tarran was acquitted of four charges (those relating to 1942, and the 1943 conspiracy charge), but convicted of the other two.^[8] His co-defendant was acquitted of both charges.^[3]

Tarran's defence counsel My C Paley Scott, said to the judge:^[8]

I would like to put it to you that this was not a case of a man making a false statement for direct self-interest. I put it as the case of a captain of a ship which is in danger of foundering, who honestly believed it was in the interests of everybody, not merely of himself, that it was better that that ship should carry on to the haven he saw ahead at the end of the war... I ask your Lordship to be lenient. This man has lost that which he spent his life in building. He has been in terrible suspense in this trial throughout almost the whole of this year, and has suffered punishment already almost more dreadful than anyone would wish to pass upon him in the circumstances of this case. I ask you to deal with this as mercifully as possible.

He was sentenced to nine months hard labour on each count, to run concurrently,^[8] and jailed at Leeds.^[4]

In his summing up, Pritchard said that Tarran and Southern had both led exemplary lives and that Tarran had spent apparently the whole of his life in the service of his creation.^[8] He added that "they can both look back upon their lives with pride".^[8]

Tarran's appeal was based on the conviction being against the weight of evidence.^[9] It succeeded on 23 April 1948.^[9]

Bibliography

• —— (1948). My Judgment. Rex V Robert Greenwood Tarran. In The Court of Criminal Appeal, 23rd April 1948. Author. 

References

External links

• Tarran's patents