HATAITAI BOOKMAKER

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 98, 27 April 1932, Page 10

HATAITAI BOOKMAKER

FINED £50

In reserved judgment delivered at the Magistrate's Court to-day, Mr. E. Page, S.M., convicted George Nelson Shore, tobacconist, of Hataitai, on. a charge of carrying on business as a bookmaker. He imposed a fine of £50, and ordered that the accused should pay the fine and costs at the rate of one-third of the. total amount per month. _ .

After reviewing the evidence for the prosecution, Mr. Page said that the definition of bookmaker in the Gaming Act, 1908, included a Tjookmaker's agent, and the Gaming Amendment Act, 1920 (which declared the business of a bookmaker to be unlawful) provided that in any prosecution for an offence against, that Act the fact that a person had directly or indirectly offered to make a bet . . . should be sufficient evidence, until the contrary was proved, that such person was carrying on the business of a bookmaker. Section 5 of the Act provided that no personshould be deemed to commit an offence against the Act by reason .merely of the-fact that he had made a bet with any other person upon any particular event, unless it was part of the business of either of such persons to make bets. ~ !

"I think that upon the evidence it is established that it was part of the business of the defendant to make bets," said Mr. Pago, "and that therefore the charge has been established. The fact, if it is the fact, that his practice was to lay off his bets with a bookmaker, from whom, he may have been allowed a commission, does not, in my opinion, alter his own status as a bookmaker."