THE HALF-HOLIDAY.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 9815, 26 August 1897, Page 3

THE HALF-HOLIDAY.

(PRESS ASSOCIATION TELEGRAM.)

WELLINGTON, August 25. Cases under the Act regulating the closing of shops on the Saturday half-holiday con' tinue to occupy the Magistrate's Court. A local tradesman was to-day charged with allowiug a boy to deliver goods half an hour beyond the closing hour on a certain Wednesday. After hearing the evidence, the Magistrate dismissed the case, and said the boy might have loitered on his way, and, with reasonable diligence, could have been back within the time under the Act. Counsel for the defendant said the defendant desired to get a Supreme Court decision as to whether such an employee was in the employment of shopkeepers irrespective of the time occupied on a round, and he would appeal on that point. In another case a Chinaman, who closed his shop but sent his cart out later with vegetables for sale, was charged with a breach 'of the Act. His Worship was asked to say that, for the purposes of the Act, a cart or Chinaman's basket was a shop. Tbe Court upheld this view. This being the first information of the kind under the Act of 1896, the defendant was fined in a nominal sum.