POLICE COURT.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 232, 28 September 1908, Page 5

POLICE COURT.

(Before Messrs G. Roberts and J. Trevithick, J.P.'s.) AN UNDESIBABLE AT WORK. A. lank, loose-limbed individual, set down as Harry Ford, alias George Light, appeared under accusation of having stolen a pair of boots on Saturday night last from outside the shop of Wolff Rothbury. According to what Chief Detective Marsack had to say of Ford, that gentleman is one the Dominion could well dispense with. About three weeks ago he arrived in Auckland from Home, having obtained a passage by the inexpensive process of stowing away. And since his advent the immigrant has toiled not nor spun, but loafed as luxuriously as might be on our community, after the manner of the vagrant. Oij Saturday , night his perverse fingers had annexed from a shop front this pair of boots, for purloining which he appeared to-day, but the feat was not performed with sufficient skill to evade detection. When taken to the station, his total capital and asset was discovered to be the clothes he wore, which were in fairly good condition for one in such strained circumstances. The immigrant held out boldly that the suit of clothes he bought in Petticoat Lane and the boots in -Middlesex-street before leaving London, but on the tweeds was the brand of the Kaiapoi Woollen Company, while the nearly new boots were probably of colonial manufacture. Nothing could be said of his past career, as nothing was known of it, remarked Mr Marsack, but it probably started on oblique lines before his arrival in New Zealand. Ford said only sufficient to admit his guilt as to the Saturday night boots, and was sentenced to 14 days in gaoL THE WRONG SIDE. It is well for those who drive horses to remember that, paradoxical as it sounds, the left side of the road is the right side, and he who drives on the wrong side in a busy thoroughfare is a dangerous nuisance and a contravene! of the highway laws, written and unwritten. A young man named George Bright was careless in the observance of this necessity a week ago on the Sew Northroad, his negligence resulting in a collision between his cart and a tramcar. Fortunately, said Sergeant Hendry, the consequences were not serious. Bright was fined 10/ and costs 7/. A BIT Or ENCOURAGEMENT. James Walker, a carter, denied that he cruelly ill-treated a horse in Graftonroad on the afternoon of the 16th inst. i The accusation was brought by Mr AII der (Inspector tor the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) Mr Brookfield ap- ; pearing. One lady said, that the horse and another one were harnesed to a load of sand, which they were vainly endeavouring to pull up Grafton-road, and for full five minutes she watched the driver use the handle of his whip upon the animal's head and shoulders. The beating was a cruel and brutal one. she opined, and was so merciless that she was obliged to turn away, sick at the sight. So far as she was able to ascertain, the horse's only fault was its inability to pull the load. Other witnesses also expressed their indignant opinion concerning the treatment meted to this horse, one of them stating that not until a third horse was added to the team was the load taken up the hill. Walker declared in self-defence that he thrashed the horse no more, than in reason —it jibbed, and should have got much more than it did, he added. He denied also that he knocked it about the head with the butt-end of his whip. A fellow-carter, who was proceeding downhill, past Walker at the time, ventured the opinion that the punishment given to that horse was mild. Defendant was doing no more than giving the horse a bit of encouragement now and again." "The horse is a bit of a cunning horse, if you know what that means," said the witness, and he wants at times a lot of persuasion." "The horse will work," put in Walker by way of explanation, "but if it takes it into his head, it will just as soon knock the head off of you as not. He lashed out and kicked the shatter in 1 \'w face, for which he got the whip, but not in any sense out of the way. I oueht to hive given him more." The Bench, while expressing sympathy ! with the efforts of the. Society to suppress cruel treatment of animals, considered that the tender feelings of the ladies had perhaps led their judgment a little ;'? to the punishment the horse received. Under the circumstances they would ylismiss the lirjormatiotij. It seems that these horses are often expected to do the maximum of work, and the drivers have to thrash them to get the work out of them." commented the Bench, in disposing of the case. A MATTER OF TASTE. John Battersby and Charles Jay, joint proprietors of a bay horse, were charged j by Mr Alder with having cruelly illtreated it by having failed to provide it with sufficient food. Mr Brookfield, who conducted for the prosecution, set out that the horse in question was in a paddock off the Hobson Park-road. It was a siding bare as the palm cf one's hand, and the equine inhabitant had perforca to resort to a wood diet for sustenance. Horses, conceded Mr Brookfield, would occasionally eat twigs for a change oi diet, but this particular horse was going in for a regular wood diet, pulling down branches from trees, eating all the bark olf, and gluttonously chewing into the wood. The giraffe-like propensities developed by this famishing horse were testified to by Mr Alder, who produced bundle of faggots gnawn and part consumed b}' the ba3' equine. Never a blade of grass was to be seen in the paddock, which was a -sideling, said the Society's inspector, who went on to complain that for four days in succession he visited the spot, and saw no ether signs of feeding for the horse than what it obtained from the trees, some 50 of which had been part demolished. There was an empty feed box lying on the ground, but no indication of any recent feeding. The animal was in very poor condition, and hat none too much water to assist in digestion its wood diet. The wood on which the animal had fed, was, according to Mr W. Rosser, vet. surgeon, a tropical shrub naturalised to the North of New Zealand. Its botanic name was solanum auriculatum, and no properly fed horse would eat it, as the flavour was particularly bitter and unpleasant. Battersby maintained that the horse was fed with honest chaff while in the paddock. A friend h-- j .d 1-nt the ! to them in order that they might earn a few shillings by hawking, but business not being brisk, they obtained temporary employment at a local ironmongery establishment, and the horse, was put into the paddock to graze, for which privilege they paid a shilling a week. And in addition, two feeds of chaff a day were- given to it. If the horse chewed the trees, it did so ior pastime or because it liked the ftawomr. He had j known. horses -to chew more- cmtet-iay- j l I

oured fodd than fiat. As to the condition of the horse, he contended that when they handed it over to its owner, its condition was as good as when, they received ic. And he was sceptical as to the inspector's declaration that this horse had attacked 50 trees*—-there had been other horses there, and they might all hav<> developed an appetite for bark. The owner of the animal also express, ed the opinion that the horse's condition had not suffered to any extent while in the charge of the two defendants, and knowing the disposition of the pony, he would not be greatly surprised to hear of this wood-eating performance, strange as it might seem. He himself had suffered the destruction of £5 worth of young fir trees by this same pony, and in that instance lack of grass could not be argued—it was simply perversion of taste, the trees having been left entirely alone by all the other horses that had grazed in that paddock. - The Bench decided, in view of the owner's testimony, and of the fact that defendants bad sworn that the animal was fed twice a day with chaff, to dismiss the information. INEBBIATE. James Roach and Peter Green, second offenders, were each fined 20/, in default seven days. Two first offenders, who were under the influence on Sunday, were each mulcted to the extent of 10/, with the alternative of 24 hours; a third was penalised 5/, and a lady was discharged. BY-LAWS. Walter Bathurst was fined 5/ and cost* 7/ for leaving his cart in Karangahaperoad with the wheel unchained, and H. Oxenham was convicted and discharged for a similar offence, mitigated.