DETENTION OF HABITUAL DRUNKARDS.

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume XXIV, Issue 3836, 19 April 1899, Page 2

DETENTION OF HABITUAL DRUNKARDS.

THE NEW ENGLISH LAW.

The Habitual Drunkards' Act which has been passed by the English Parliament, although not operative as yet, is being hailed with satisfaction by the, trade in London. By its provisions, the, punishment for being drunk andj disorderly, is extended from the old period of three months to a possibly longer term, and after the commission of certain indictable offences, the prisoner may be charged with being an habitual drunkard and sentenced to a term of detention in a place something between a hospital and a prison after serving any other sentence the Court may impose upon him. In dealing with the subject the ' London Licensed Victuallers' Gazette ' very pertinently remarks :—< Whether the threat of an increased punishment will have a deterrent effect or not is impossible to foretell at present. It has been said many a time that it is impossible to make a nation sober by Act of Parliament; but if the Act does not make the nation sober but only keeps a set of. besotted beasts, who are the terror of law-abiding publicans. und3r restraint for some time, the trade will welcome the Act with open arms. Day after day we see men and women who are hardly ever sober going into public-houses, and when the land lord refuses to serve them on account of their, condition, bang goes a tumbler through a glass minor, or whack goes a pewter on a barman's head. The magistrates are now trying to aid the publican by the infliction of exemplary fines and sentences on these ruffians, who do not care what injury and annoyance they inflict on the more peaceful customers, or upon the landlord's property True, moralists of a certaiu class may declaim about it being the fault of the publican that these pests exist, but this is not I so. AJI the publicans in the world could not prevent anyone from going into a grocer's and buying a bottle of gin as the foundation of a solid drunk, then sallying forth when in an inebriated condition to various houses and after being ejected from one and the J other as soon as possible, ultimately being locked up as drunk and d disorderly. If the new Act can c stop a continuance of this sort of thing it will be a great benefit to the world at large besides the trade.

{iKHTCLE BJDING TAUGHT, V Bicycles provided, also on hire, by boar, day or month. — HENNING'S SCHOOL, Stanley-street, Auckland.