SOBER ENGLAND

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 May 1927, Page 8

SOBER ENGLAND

A REMARKABLE RECORD.

Whether or not the cost of whisky—8s sid tax is include in the price of 12s 6d per bottle —has checked consumption, clear indication was given at the recent Brewster Sessions in every part of the country that the people of Great Britain are becoming much more temperate.

Since 1913, when there were 188,877 cases ,the convictions for drunkenness have decreased by more than 113,000, a fall of 60 per cent. Sir William Bull, M.P., who has collated the information on the subject given at the various Brewster Sessions, said to a Daily Mail reporter: In Kent there are 22 villages, forming what is known as the Liberties of New Romney, which can boast of a nine years’ record of absolute sobriety. In the petty sessional divisions of Bishop’s Stortford, Albany, Ware, and Buntingford, Hertsfordshire, in which there are 34 towns and villages with a population of more than 35,000 and 230 license-holders, there were no convictions either last year.

Clean records were also shown in, amkong other places, Newmarket (Suffolk), Torrington (Devon), Blackburn (Lancashire), Stowmarket (Suffolk), Penryn and Launceston (Cornwall), Port Talbot (Glamorgan), Hadleigh (Essex), and Brandon. In Yorkshire the number of drunkenness convictions twenty years ago was 25,898; last year it was 6645. During the last few years convictions for drunkenness at the metropolitan Police Courts have been steadily falling.