CHRISTMAS IN SYDNEY

Evening Star, Issue 19759, 9 January 1928, Page 11

CHRISTMAS IN SYDNEY

VIOLENCE AND DRUNKENNESS WHOLESALE ARRESTS That Christmas is the season of peace on earth and goodwill to men may read all right on paper; but in Sydney this Christmas it was honored more in the breach than in the observance (writes the Sydney correspondent of tho Auckland “ Star ’). It was,*for instance, the “drunkest ” Christmas season for many years. Special instructions, as is usual, were issued that only the most helpless inebriates were to bo locked up by the police. • A casual glance round the streets on Christmas Eve showed that the definition of a helpless inebriate differed materially with tho varying ideas of •the policeman on duty. Yet, in spite of all tint, 161 “drunks” were locked up both on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, many of them being so helpless that they spent the joyous occasion continously in the cells. At Newtown police were called to a homo at 3 a.m. on Christmas morning, and found a woman frightfully battered about the head and body, unconscious on the bed in the front room. When they made inquiries from her husband he said; “1 did it.” At the hospital she was found to have a fractured skull, severe concussion, numerous abrasions and lacerations, and severe shock. Her husband was subsequently arrested on a charge of inflicting grievous bodily harm. At Redfcrn a woman rushed into the police station early on Christmas morning showing two black eves and other corroboration of her story that her husband was assaulting her. When a constable went down to investigate he found the husband at the front gate. The latter used indecent language, was placed under arrest, and immediately knocked the constable down. In retaliation the constable struck him twice on the head with his baton. Before being charged with assaulting the police the man had to be treated at hospital for lacerations of the scalp. In addition to the 161 street •“ drunks,” there were eight motor drivers foolish enough to be out in their vehicles while under the influence of liquor. These were all arrested. And on top of that the driver of a motor car which struck a culvert near Kellyville, overturned and injured four passengers, was subsequently charged with driving while under the influence of liquor, too. At Orange a party of picnickers were* returning home on Christmas Day, when, in attempting to negotiate a sharp turn, the driver capsized the car. His wife and another woman passenger were killed and five others injured. Immediately afterwards he was arrested on a charge of feloniously slaying his wife. Assaults and robberies were so frequent in the city, especially where tho victims were drunk, as to be too common to merit more than passing mention in the papers. A Redfern policeman, chasing supposed burglars in a yard early on Christmas Day, fired four shots at them before he could make an arrest. Nine boys, who had spent the Christmas holidays and many days beforehand in raids on launches and yachts in Sydney Harbor. and had even gone to the length of taking one valuable launch, driving it miles up tho harbor and using it to rob another launch, wore arrested on Christmas night. It is claimed that they were responsible for an episode which had puzzled police up to tho time of their arrest. For a week previously a motor launch was found abandoned outside Sydney Heads, and was floating towards tho rocks at daybreak, when water police went out and salvaged the craft. The boys under arrest aro claimed to have driven the launch outside tho Heads, and to have rowed ashore from it in a dinghy during the early hours of the morning. At Darlinghnrst on Christmas Eve a restaurant keeper left £220 in notes in a suit case hidden in his kitchen. Next morning the bag was found in the back yard; but the notes were gone. Motor cars were stolen in every suburb, and used mainly by joyriders, some of tho cars being damaged in the process. In one case someone with a perverted sense of humor released the brakes on a car standing on top of a steep hill, and watched it run down and wreck itself against a brick wall at tho bottom.

Numerous accidents occurred on Boxing Day, the mast serious being one in which two men were killed and several injured when a lorry overturned at Braidwood. In another a man, struck by a car, was carried like a mascot, draped over tho bonnet for 200yds, and then dropped to the ground. Tho driver of tho car, in true Christmas fashion, drove on without attending to the injured man. Yes, Sydney certainly had its usual quiet Christmas.