"CHANGED TIMES."

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 138, 12 June 1936, Page 9

"CHANGED TIMES."

COUNSEL'S PLEA. BOOKSELLER CHARGED. IMPORTED MAGAZINES. "Public opinion has changed considerably since the mid-Victorian age and the conditions, that then pertained from the point of view 'of public morals does not appertain to-day," said Mr. G. P. Finlay at the Police Court this morning, when pleading on behalf of W. P. G. Ladd, u Victoria Street bookseller, who appeared on two charges of selling indecent documents. The fact that two issues of an American magazine had been sold by the defendant to Detective Stevenson .was admitted, the prosecutions being based upon the illustrated covers. Mr. Finlay said American magazines of the type before the Court were imported in such large numbers that the sales, he was authoritatively informed, reached £1500 a month. "These magazines go through a certain process of censoring by the Customs and pages containing a certain class of advertisement are cut out," said Mr. Finlay. "The fact the magazines were in some sense censored has to an extent misled the wholesalers and retailers. That, however, does not excuse ther.i if the publications are held to be indecent.

"Dealing with the two books before the Court, I am going to submit there is nothing- in them which is at all''suggestive.' The one authoritative case in New Zealand is Clarkson v. McCarthy, decided in 1917. The well-known picture 'The Sleeping Beauty' was exhibited in a shop window and Mr. Justice Cooper held it to be indecent. His Honor held that anything which tended to deprave or corrupt was indecent. "But that was not a decision in law, but was judged in relation to the time factor, the standard of public opinion, public enlightenment and public morals at that time," said Mr. Finlav. "That standard has undergone much- change since and there is a similar change in literature. What was to the mid-Vic-torian something of horror is not so regarded to-day. I respectfully submit there is nothing conveyed in the pictures in these magazines that the public does not know. What appears in these magazines whets no appetite. Thsre is nothing salacious and they would deprave and corrupt no one. Regarding the pictures from a common sense view I suggest they are not indecent within the meaning of the Act." Mr. McKean, S.M., reserved his decision.