THE PLUMBER'S HONOR.

Mataura Ensign, 30 December 1911, Page 2

THE PLUMBER'S HONOR.

1 RESENTMENT AT COMIC PAPERS. At a meeting of the Institute of Plumbers at Huddersfield Mr Ohalloner, of Blackpool, took exception to statements regarding plumbers made by Mr Harold Begbie in a book. In a chapter headed "The Plumber, 5 ' Mr Begbie said that the plumbing trade was the worst from a moral point of view; that there were no bigger set of | thieves than those in the plumbing \ trade; that the writer did not know | why it was, but plumbers appeared not ! to be able to help it, and that he would j sooner have a burglar in the house than ! a plumber—(laughter); further, that if | those were "rum" things to say about the whole trade they were true. The plumber, said Mr Challoner, had been made the butt of the comic papers for a great number of years, but Mr Begbie's statements were serious. He moved that the executive be asked to consider the wisdom of taking legal opinion as to whether they had not some cause for action. Mr Armitage, Huddersfield, declared that statements were a libel and read a further extract from the book, in which the author said he had seen ia man in a plumber's shop take up a pot of boiling metal and sling it at a boy "for a cock-eyed action or a bad word." Tlie resolution to take legal opinion was carried.