WINE AT DANCE

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 January 1941, Page 3

WINE AT DANCE

NOVEL DEFENCE REJECTED The defence that a dance ceased to be a dance at midnight on Saturday and becarhe a'-private party was raised in the Magistrate’s Court, Wellington, when William Steven Pearce, carpenter, aged 47, was charged with having, port wine in his possession in the Peter Pan Dance Hall while a dance was being held there. • Evidence was given that defendant was found with a bottle of wine by a constable at 12.5 a.m. on Sunday, September 22, that in granting the licence for the dance hall the Wellington City Council stipulated that the dances were to cease at midnight on Saturdays, and that it was the custom for the proprietor to close the doors at midnight on a Saturday and announce that the dance had ceased as a public gathering, but that patrons could continue dancing for an hour as his guests. Defendant said he was given the wine in the hall.

On behalf of defendant, Mr. A. B. Sievwright poitned out that the law under which the charge had been brought contained the phrase “Every person who, while a dance is being held in any hall drinks intoxicating liquor in the hall or has it in his possession in the hall . . . commits an offence.” Defendant was at the dance, but the liquor was not brought into the premises before 12 p.m. He submitted that the dance ceased at 12 o’clock and it could not then be anything but a- private party. “This was a public dance,” said the magistrate, Mr. Stout. “There is no evidence before me that it was anything but a public dance.” Defendant ,was fined £2. The magistrate said it seemed to him that if what had been described in the evidence was going to be done the licence for the hall should be cancelled. It was a deliberate attempt to evade the sec 1 tion of the law which was intended to prevent liquor being drunk at public dances.