DEATH-TRAP CINEMA

Evening Star, Issue 21622, 18 January 1934, Page 12

DEATH-TRAP CINEMA

BOY'S MOTHER TO PAY FINE LONDQN, January 4. The enterprise of a boy of thirteen, who for three years has been conductr ing an underground cinema at Ramsgate, elicited the admiration of the local Bench, which,. nevertheless, ’ fined his mother £1 for a contravention of the Public Health Act. A police visitor to the cinema said that seventy children between the ages of two and fourteen paid a penny each admittance to a room 12ft by 13ft, unsubstantially constructed and not supplied with suitable exits. • A fire brigade officer gave evidence that an electric light cable could easily have short-circuited. : He saw children playing with an electric light flex through which ,240 volts were p&ssing. * The Chief Constable said he would not have prosecuted, but after warning, the mother that the premises; were a death, trap another entertainment was given. : Twenty or thirty children might have lost their lives had fire broken out.'