PORTER CONVICTED

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 38, 8 November 1933, Page 11

PORTER CONVICTED

Sale of Beer After Hours LICENSING ACT CHARGES The admission made by a. night porter of a hotel that he bud been carrying bn an illicit business of selling liquor, which was his own, in the hotel at nights was mentioned in the Police Court yesterday when deferred judgment was given by Mr..E. Page, S.M., on alleged breaches of tlie Licensing Act. Robert Wilson, who until recently was night porter at the Carlton Hotel, pleaded guilty and was fined £lO and costs for selling beer without a license; a cjiarge of supplying beer after hours, to which he also pleaded guilty. was withdrawn. Samuel Dunn, licensee of the hotel, pleaded not guilty to selling beer after hours, aud the charge was dismissed. At 1.45 on the morning of October 22 a police constable saw a night porter of the Carlton Hotel come out of the hotel carrying a sugar-bag, which he placed in a waiting motor' car in which were seated three men, said Mr. Page. The constable went to the ear and took possession of the bag, which was found to contain nine bottles of beer. He reported the matter to his sergeant ami the two of them visited the hotel. They were admitted by the night porter, who was the only person on duty in the hotel. They found in the office stacked on a shelf twelve bottles of >ale, one bottle of port." two bottles of brandy, and one bottle, three half-bottles and one flask of whisky. Lying oh the shelf near the liquor was the sutn of £2/10/- in notes and silver. The night porter, in reply to ques’ tions, stated to the police that this liquor and the money were his own property and that, during the night hours on which he was on duly, he was illicitly selling it, unknown to the licensee. .He stated : “I buy it throughout the day and stock it down in the cellar, and bring it up at night after the licensee goes to bed. I then put it into Um office. : . .. . i have been selling liquor during the night time for the past four or five months. Sometimes I sell as much as 30/- worth in a night, and sometimes very little.” The following evening the police interviewed the licensee, who stated tha.t lie had learned of tlie events from the porter and discharged him; the liquor , was not the licensee’s property. and he had been unaware of what was going on.' The night porter had been in his employ for two years. “The question whether the licensee must be convicted in respect of the sale of the nine bottles of beer depends on whether the prosecution lias shown that it was his liquor,” said Mr. Page. . . . “While the circumstances of the sale and of the finding of this liquor and this money in the office are certainly consistent with the view that the. jjquor was the property of the licensee, I dp, not think, that they are sufficiently unequivocal to establish affirmatively that the evidence of the licensee and of the night porter is untrue, and that, the liquor was the property of the licensee and not of the porter. I think, therefore, that the charge against the licensee must be dismissed.”