Art: Vandal Sentenced

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What penance may society exact from an Irish elevator-man who, disgruntled over his pay, gets drunk, steals and drinks a house holder's Canadian ale, gnaws the householder's baked ham, belabors the householder's crystal chandelier and mirrors with the ham bone and flings the ale bottles—not to mention ash trays, knives & bric a-brac—through the householder's high-priced canvases by Rubens and Van Dyck? For such deeds, causing $50,000 damage in the Fifth Avenue apartment of C. Bai Lihme, retired zinc man (TIME, July 11), a Manhattan judge last week sentenced one John Healy to a prison term of one and one-half to three years. But, said the judge, the New York Legislature could not have foreseen, when it framed the state law on vandalism, such a spectacular achievement as Vandal Healy's with bone and bottles. The vandalism law, said the judge, should be stiffened to protect art owners. One George Tiernan, drinking companion of Vandal Healy during his onslaught in the Lihme apartment, was discharged by the court, having been cleared, by Vandal Healy's confession, of any active complicity.