A VICTORIAN JUDGE ON VICTORIAN DRINKING.

Feilding Star, Volume III, Issue 830, 17 March 1909, Page 3

A VICTORIAN JUDGE ON VICTORIAN DRINKING.

His Honour Mr Justice Hodges, at a recent "Pleasant Sunday Afternoon' in the South Melbourne Weslevan Church, gave an address on "Drink and Crime." He found that the population was a little- over a million, j and that the consumption of alcohol was 1,360,000 gallons of spirits. J 2,000.000 gallons of wine, and 20.000,---000 gallons of beer. He assumed that the male adults were practically responsible for this ocean of liquor. He took them as one in four of the population, and then deducted the members of the temperance societies. This gave a yearly average of 72 gallons of hw»r. 7 "gallons of wine, and o gallons of spirits— or a weekly average of H gallons of beer. 7 gallons of wine, and $ a bottle of spirits. This cost them £22 10s per year, or 8s per week each. Between 1885 and 1592 the amount spent in this way was £46,000.000, or the exact amount" of the Victorian public debt, which is believed to have caused the present depression. His Honour then declared with all the authority of his great office, that drink was the chief cause of crime.