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Friday October 5 2007
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Bedder the devil you know
» Scruby gets suspended sentence after webcam sting
Tom Parry-Jones
A light-fingered bedder at Sidney
Sussex College was caught
by students when a webcam recorded
her stealing money from a
student room.
Cleaner Margaret Scruby, 58,
was sentenced on Monday to four
months in prison, suspended for 18
months, after she pleaded guilty to
five charges of theft from student’s
rooms, including on some occassions,
small amounts of change.
The worst hit student had £140
stolen, but in total Scruby was reported
to have taken £146.90, which
she has now been ordered to repay
to the students involved.
Money was taken from purses
and desks in the college’s Sussex
House accommodation. The presiding
magistrate, Rosie Spencer, described
Scruby’s actions as “a serious
breach of trust”.
The case has brought to light
Scruby’s long history of theft and
fraud. In 1991, she was convicted of
stealing from her employer, and in
2000 she was jailed for three years
after defrauding Sir John and Lady
Walley of nearly £90,000.
She began working as a cleaner
for the nonagenarian couple in 1994
and forged cheques in their names
for two years before she was
turned in by a suspicious cashier.
Scruby pleaded guilty to 25 charges
of forgery and obtaining money
by deception.
In the Sidney Sussex case, the
bedder had initially denied involvement
with the thefts, which occurred
in February of this year, but
reportedly confessed when faced
with the overwhelming evidence of
the webcam footage.
Scruby’s lawyer Jeremy Kendall,
mitigating, said that while Scruby
couldn’t explain why she stole the
money, the crimes had come shortly
after she was widowed. Her husband,
Eric, was killed by a drink-driver.
The university has a long history
of putting webcams to use, though
perhaps for more trivial reasons.
The first webcam ever was created
by students at the Cambridge-
Computer Laboratory in 1991. Installed
in the Trojan Room, it was
pointed at the coffee pot and updated
every second, so that students
could check if there was refreshment
available without leaving
their seats. The webcam was eventually
taken out of service in 2001,
and the coffee machine was sold at
auction to German newspaper Der
Spiegel for £3,350.
Varsityprofile
»Vasilios Anastasiou
»born
delphi, greece 1961
»22 years
since vasilios arrived in
cambridge and got his first
job at gardie’s
»over 7,000
photos of patrons on his
wall
»3 weeks
gardie’s the opera’s original
run at queens’. extra shows
scheduled at the union due
to unanticipated success
Originally from Greece, 46 year
old Vas, as he is more commonly
known, has owned and worked
in The Gardenia for over twenty
years. He studied engineering at
university in Athens and worked
for the Greek agricultural minister.
He came to England 22 years ago to
work on genetic research in Cambridge
and first came to Gardie’s in
order to be able to speak with staff
in his own language.
Before Vas took over, The
Gardenia was mainly a restaurant
for fellows. Some people
claim it was founded in 1902, others
say it was founded in 1918.
Vas claims that it was originally
much more expensive and only
frequented by affluent students.
Over the twenty years he has
worked there Vas has noticed a
change in the type of students
who are at Cambridge. Before
2000 they were mostly privately
educated but now he thinks
they seem to come from a much
wider range of backgrounds.
The photographs that paper the
wall of Gardie’s originated when a
student was desperate for a kebab
but didn’t have any money. The
penniless student offered to leave
his camera as a guarantee that he
would pay the next day, but in the
end decided to leave the camera as
a present. The camera sat on the
counter a while until one day Vas
began the long standing tradition
of photographing his liveliest customers.
He keeps all of the photos
and has collected almost 7000.
Vas says that the Daily Mail
offered him “a lot of money” to
buy the photographs but he refused.
He wants to create a mammoth
exhibition of all the pictures
and invite old students to come
back and buy them so the money
can be donated to local charities.
Some years ago Varsity ran a
successful campaign to save The
Gardenia from being shut down
and ever since then Varsity has
been his favourite newspaper.
On the subject of inebriated students,
he says: “They are not drunk,
they are young. Students have an
obligation to have a good time.” Vas’
own son has just started at Kent
University studying Archaeology.
Vas says that it is part of his
philosophy to pass on a love of
life, along with his kebabs. He enjoys
having philosophical chats
with students upstairs in the Gardenia
restaurant. His favourite
subjects are the students he has
met and the books he has read.
He collects rare books, especially
ones about philosophy, religion
and alchemy. His favourite book is
an untitled collection of scripts by
Francis Bacon. He loves writing
and plans to publish his memoirs
when he has retired.