GAMING HOUSE FINES

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 135, 5 December 1944, Page 6

GAMING HOUSE FINES

P.A. AUCKLAND, December 4. I Fines on persons committing a breach of the Gaming Act by illegal betting have been stepped up in Auckland considerably of.late. Recently a first offender was fined £60 and this morning '-a record "high" was reached .when the Magistrate; Mr. Luxford, fined a'first offender £100 on a charge of: using premises as a comriion gam-ing-house.

Counsel-for the defendant; Wallace Robert Boyd, said his client had been operating only three months and intended giving up the game as he found betting did not pay. " A woman, Alma Bavasto, was fined £25 for permitting Boyd to use premises she occupied as a gaming-house. Counsel said that net-making was carried on at the house,.which was more or less a club for fishermen who called there.

The net seems to have caught more than fish in this instance," commented the Magistrate. , .

William Dudley, a Maori, aged 27 who pleaded guilty at New Plymouth to charges of assault with intent to commit rape and indecent assault on a female, was sentenced in the Supreme Court today to two years' imprisonment on each charge, the sentences to be concurrent. Mr. Justice Johnston remarked that the two offences indicated a tendency on the part of the prisoner to interfere with woynen. "Such reports as I have," he added, 'show that prisoner is unruly and not < amenable ;to discipline."