FINE IMPOSED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 21, 26 January 1939, Page 13

FINE IMPOSED.

RACEHORSE OWNER. BETS TAKEN IN HOTEL "TO OBLIGE COTTOMER&.» (By Telegraph.—Press Association.) CHRISTCHURCH, this day. "Quite often where reputable persons make one slip the Racing Commission lifts the ban," said Mr. E. C. Levvev in the Magistrate's Court this morning when Oliver Francis Watson, licensee of the Lancaster Park Hotel and racehorse owner, pleaded guilty to a charge of using the public bar of his premises as a common gaming house. He was fined £2.1. The magistrate's remarks were made in reply to counsel, who said a conviction would affect Watson as a racehorse owner and debar him from attending meetings. He asked the magistrate to consider this when deciding on a penalty. As a result of complaints, said Detective-Sergeant Sinclair, the police had placed the hotel under observation. Within a period of a month or more thf police discovered that twenty-four bets had been taken. The largest of these had been for 10/. The police inteiided that the prosecution should be a warning to other hotelkeepers who were carrying on in the same manner. Watson, said witness, told the police he had taken the bets to oblige customers. If he had not done so his customers would have gone to another 1 hotel. Watson had not been in any sort of trouble before. Apparently he was not in the business in a big way. I