A 15-year-old boy from Clapton stole his aunt’s life savings of £32 and used them to fund an international trip.

“It appears you have run away all over Europe,” Mr Seymour Collins, chair of the bench at the North London Juvenile Court, told him. “The first time you did it on the cheap, but this second time you did it at your aunt’s expense. I suppose that money was her life savings, and you frittered it all away, spending it on selfish pleasures.”

The child had sent a letter from Jersey, which his uncle read to the bench. It said: “London and England give me a pain, and I was fed up with the places I know. I’ve been to France and I must go to see the place with all the snow.”

The aunt said the boy had always been “rather a wanderer” and wondered if psychiatric treatment might help.

n In other news, four boys – including one aged eight - admitted breaking into 12 flats in Hoxton.