PAKAPOO OFFENCES

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 55, 3 September 1945, Page 6

PAKAPOO OFFENCES

THREE MEN FINED

Ah Low, gardener, 50, pleaded guilty in the Magistrate's Court tqday to a charge that, being the occupier of premises at 155 Taranaki Street, he kept and used them as a common gam-ing-house. The charge was a sequel to a visit paid to the premises at 7.40 p.m. on Saturday by Sergeant Buchanan and two constables, according to Sub-Inspector J. Abel. The defendant was found at a table with pakapoo tickets and £12 10s in cash in front of him. Mr. C. A. L. Treadwell, counsel for the defendant, said there were two Europeans only and no other Chinese on the premises, so Ah Low was not conducting a big business. Mr. Treadwell asked the Magistrate to take into consideration the wider forms of gambling by Europeans which had taken up so much of his Worship's time, compared with the present venial offences. The number of convictions of Chinese in Wellington in the past was far less than those against Europeans for other forms of gambling. Pakapoo gambling was not sufficiently serious for the police to deal with it other than spasmodically. The Magistrate, commenting that the defendant had been fined in 1941 for a similar offence, imposed a fine of £50. The two men found on the premises, Charles Alfred Joiner, mechanic, 30, and Raymond Frederick Alfred Mathews, barman, 37, each pleaded guilty to being there without lawful excuse, and were each fined £5.