THE MONTHLY DRINK RESULTS.

Evening Star, Issue 12624, 2 October 1905, Page 1

THE MONTHLY DRINK RESULTS.

TO THIS SDITOK. Sir, —Although the results of drink chronicled in the columns of the Dunedin paper* during September are not quite so numerous as usual, yet the monthly record is a ghastly tale. First, let me call attention to the fact that seven persons found it necessary to protect themselves from this alleged gentlemanly business either by taking out prohibition orders against themselves or by their relatives or friends doing so. Four of these cases were at Port t Chalmers. Methinks that any democrat would be hard put to it to justify a business in which five persons found it necessary, in order to earn a living for one month, to reduce four other persons to such a state that they have to be publicly branded as “slaves to drink.” However, to pass on. There were chronicled during September thirty-four cases of drunkenness, four of which were women and thirteen first offenders. This last group is the most saddening. There were six cases of obscene language, four deaths (two accidental, one premature, and one violent), three assaults and accidents in which life was in great danger of being lost, and four ordinary assaults (some of a serious nature). Three cases of ill-treatment of wives, all of them very serious (in one of the case* the , man was flogged). These have a bearing on the discussion re wife desertion, as also has a most tragically unhappy marriage which is recorded. Two men were reduced to delirium tremens, and there were eight breaches of prohibition orders. Seven assorted offences of the usual kind connected with drink make up a total of eighty-one matters in all of which the connection of drink with the trouble is stated in the reports. No doubt alcohol had to do with other cases also, bnt. was not mentioned. In view of the Local Option poll slier: iy due, the “trade” ate no doubt doing .heir best to keep down results, and we are now probably at the minimum that can be ■ • complished while men are “licensed to «■ : alcohol.” It is the alcohol (not the Vi".teranta, bad as those are) that causes t l .- midhief. We must either perpetuate t ■ cause or abolish it; there is no mUi■ • course.—l am, etc., 6. Beelnahd Nicholls. October 2.