LIQUOR NEAR DANCE HALL

Press, Volume LXXV, Issue 22894, 15 December 1939, Page 18

LIQUOR NEAR DANCE HALL

♦- THREE MEN FINED £5 ttBESS ASSOCIATION TELEGRAM.) HAMILTON, December 14. Brought under the recently enacted amendment to the Police. Offences Act, 1927, which makes it an offence for a : person to have liquor in his possession near a dance hall while a dance is in ' progress, three charges were heard before Mr S. L. Patterson, S.M., in the Magistrate’s Court at Hamilton to-day, when Colin Thomas Bell, of Rototuna, George Frederick William Fiscther, a barman, of Te Awamutu, and Leslie Vincent Mathers, of Te Awamutu, were charged under the act. A car was stopped in an empty section near the Frankton Town Hall on the night of a dance and people were seen walking to and from the car to the hall. The police investigated and found 17 bottles of beer and five empties. “These cases are of • a serious nature,” said the Magistrate. “The consequences of taking and consuming liquor near dance halls, and particularly drinking liquor in cars, have been very serious and have led the Legislature to make such- action an Offence. These offences will be treated

as of a serious nature and the fines will not be light.” Each defendant was fined £5 and costs.