Londonderry: Shop owner receives apology for theft 30 years ago

The culprit thanked Mr Barr for "not bringing shame on my ma and da" by exposing the crime

January tends to be the month when many of us re-evaluate our lives and resolve to take action.

And so it was for an anonymous person who chose now as the time to ease his or her conscience for a misdemeanour carried out in Londonderry almost 30 years ago.

The person sent a card to a shop owner in the city's Carnhill area to apologise for stealing £10 from him "many years ago".

Jim Barr was surprised by the message, which thanked him for "not bringing shame on my ma and da" by exposing the crime.

The culprit suspected Mr Barr knew he was being duped, saying: "I'm sure you knew. I'm sure your till was down a tenner that day."

'Probably a fella'

But the Derry man told the BBC he had no recollection of it.

"I haven't a clue who it was, but a friend of mine who's a teacher pointed out that it's probably a fella [boy] as a girl in Derry would tend to say 'mammy and daddy' rather than ma and da.

"And I'm guessing they were about 12 or 13 so they're probably in their early 40s now."

Jim Barr says he would love to secretly meet the person who sent the letter

He explained that in the nineties, pupils from the nearby St Columb's College were the most regular customers in the mornings.

"There was just one shop and 250 odd houses here, so we would have had a lot of boys calling in for sweets and crisps before school," he said.

"I don't need to know who it was because it's not important, but what I would love is for the person to meet up with me on the quiet so we could go down memory lane and have a laugh about it and say nothing to anyone."

'God bless!'

The letter continued: "I pretended my ma and da gave me a £20 when they only gave me £10.

"You knew. You told me to double check. I pretended I did and so you gave me the extra £10."

He or she then thanked him for not mentioning it to their parents and for being "a pillar of the community".

The message ended with the words: "God bless!"

Remarking on this, Mr Barr said: "This is a person of faith and this must have been playing on his conscience for years.

"He gave me back £40, that's the tenner and a pound of interest for every year."

In a week when questions have been asked about the integrity of some figures in Downing Street, Mr Barr suggested most people were innately honest.

"Most people are good deep down," he said.

"You get the odd bad apple, but the way I look at it is that person might have had a hard life and it's probably just the way they were brought up."

The story has attracted a huge positive response on social media since it was first reported in the Derry Journal on Tuesday,

"You can barely get a Derry Journal around here today because so many people have been going out to read the story and it's been lovely to hear these messages from people, some of them I don't even know, saying nice things about me," said Mr Barr.

"Maybe with all the doom and gloom of January, people just like to hear a good news story."