INDECENT DOCUMENT?

Evening Star, Issue 22364, 13 June 1936, Page 1

INDECENT DOCUMENT?

CHARGE AGAINST BOOKSELLER MORE MODERN VIEW OH MORALS URGED [Pir United Press Association.] AUCKLAND, June 12. The plea that public opinion had changed considerably since the midVictorian era was made by Mr Finlay when appearing on behalf of a city A bookseller, ,W. P. G. Ladd, who was charged in the Magistrate’s Court with selling indecent documents. The charges referred to the covers of two American magazines which had been sold to a detective. Mr Finlay said that sales of magazines of/the type referred to totalled £1,500 a week. Pages containing certain types of advertisements . had been removed by the Customs Department, and the fact that the magazines received some sort .of censorship misled the wholesalers and retailers,; That, however, was no excuse if the publications wore held to be indecent. He quoted a case in 1917 in which Mr Justice Cooper held that the well-known picture, ‘ The Sleeping Beauty,’’ exhibited in a shop window, was indecent. His Honour had held that anything which tended to deprave or corrupt was indecent. That was the only authoritative case in the Dominion. However, the standard of public opinion, public enlightenment, and public morals had greatly changed, since what was regarded with horror by mid-Victorians was not so regarded today. There was nothing salacious in the magazines, submitted counsel, and from a commonsense view they were not indecent within the meaning of the Act. The magistrate, Mr W. R. M'Kean, reserved his decision.