Hospital Sports Privileges.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume III, Issue 381, 23 November 1889, Page 2

Hospital Sports Privileges.

fro THE EDITOR.]

Sm, —Seeing by advertisement that the above are for sale by auction, I should like to a?k, with your permission, whether it is the intention of the Committee tq restrict the bidding for publicans’ booths to those who carry on that business ? Or whether persons outside the trade can come in as was the case in the sale of privileges at the recent race meeting held by the Poverty Bay Park Company ? I respectfully submit, for the consideration of the Hospital Sports Committee, that to sell tq an outsider who has no authority for the sale of liquor, except a publican’s license borrowed for fhe occasion, is unfair to those in the Licensed Victualling trade, who are always paying heavy licenses, and making their living exclusively in that way, In the case of the recent race meeting, I think publicans have a right to complain of unfair competition, the booths being nominally sold to a person who it must be assumed was merely acting as dummy for the 'publicart whose name, in large letters, adorned both booths on race day. ’4? no one other than a nublican can sell liquor ajt any race meeting, sports, or other such'gathering, it seems to me, as I have already said, absurd to sell to anyone a privilege which he oannot legally exercise, and is simply an encouragement tq a class of dealing, which the Park Company, or any other company, having its best interests at heart, should endeavor to discourage, and is a blow at that fair competition which should always prevail. In conclusion I hope the Hospital Sports Committee will tpake it an instruction to the auctioneer that the bidding be confined to those who hold publican’s licenses, thereby discountenancing dummyisrn, and giving legitimate traders a fair-field and no favoi',—l am, &0., LIOENSSD VlomtlMi