“FIVE SHILLINGS A TIME.”

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 9 October 1924, Page 2

“FIVE SHILLINGS A TIME.”

A J.P. WHO MADE MONEY. There are few; conferences, which do not develop at one stage or another a humourist (says the Dominion). He appeared! at the recent Justices of the Peace Conference. A delegate from Hastings confessed that he had tried for 10 years, to become a Justice of the Peace, and had he not been successful he would have gone on trying for another 200 years, for he considered the position one of the most honourable in the land. On occasions h© had asked others why they were not J.P. ! s, and they had told him that there was no money in it. But he remembered one J.P. who made money out of it. He used to charge 5s every time he signed a document or witnessed a signature, and as he signed four or five a day he made a tidy sum. He was at it for 20 years before the authorities found him out —then he was asked to seek another occupation. The speaker also said that he had noticed in the Justices Manual that it was necessary for the list of Justices to be exhibited, each one to be called upon to act in alphabetical order. As his own turn had long been passed he showed the passage to the clerk of the court, who said it could not be done there, but he had insisted and it was done. “Why,” he concluded, “there were some men in the town on the list who didn’t know they were Justices, because they were never called on to act. There was another J.P. who used to hang about the railway station with the policemen looking for a job. (Loud laughter.) He got his name in the paper nearly every day!” (Convulsive laughter.)