PICTURES IN TELESCOPES

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27499, 5 November 1954, Page 11

PICTURES IN TELESCOPES

ONE HELD TO BE INDECENT FINE OF £2O SEQUEL TO SALE Holding that only one of six toy plastic telescopes exhibited was indecent, Mr Raymond Ferner, S.M., in the Magistrate’s Court, yesterday convicted Guy Luey, a fruiterer, of selling indecent documents—-plastic telescopes containing the nude figure of a woman. He was fined £2O and the Magistrate ordered that the telescope which he held indecent be destroyed. Detective-Sergeant G. C. Urquhart said that on July 1 the police visited Luey’s shop, where it was found that he had four dozen of these plastic telescopes, used as key rings, on sale. He produced to the court six of these articles, and said that the police would not prosecute on five of these, but the sixth they considered indecent. Luey told detectives he had bought six dozen of these telescopes from a nephew for 2s 7d each, and he was selling them for 4s 9d each. He had sold about two dozen to young men and women, but on no occasion had he sold any to juveniles, said Detective-Ser-geant Urquhart. Mr Young said he doubted if the pictures in the telescopes were indecent, and the authorities must have shared that doubt because it had taken from July to that day for a prosecution to be brought. There had been nothing clandestine in the manner in which the defendant had sold the telescopes. He had them in his window and on the counter of the shop. It semed strange that the Customs Department allowed the goods into the country and then another Government department prosecuted a man for having what the Customs Department said he could have.

After looking into the telescopes, the Magistrate said that if he imposed a somewhat lesser fine than that made in Wellington, it did not mean that he was quarrelling with the Wellington fine in any way. In this case £here was no suggestion that Luey had sold these articles to a Juvenile, which had been the case in Wellington. Some of them were less objectionable than those in the magazine produced. Luey would be convicted and fined £2O. Detective-Sergeant Urquhart asked the Magistrate if he would make an order as to confiscation. The Magistrate said that if he had been asked if all the telescopes were indecent, he would have found that only one came into that category, and that one was ribald. The objectionable telescope was to be destroyed and the others returned to Luey.