HOTEL LIGHTS.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLII, Issue 129, 2 June 1908, Page 8

HOTEL LIGHTS.

At the meeting of the Wairau Licensing Committee to-day, Mr Conolly, on behalf of the licensee of the Royal Hotel, Blenheim, applied for permission to extinguish the light in front of his hotel after ten o'clock. It was a great tax, said counsel, on hotelkeepers, especially in the country) to keep a light burning all night, at a time when the hotels were supposed to be absolutely closed. In the cases of the Ferry and Junction Hotels at Spring Creek, for which similar applications were made; counsel urged the ebsurdity of having a light burning all night. In regard to the Borough it was hardly fair tha,t a licensee should have t*> keep a light burning all night, in a street that the Borough Council considered it unnecessary to light. Mr Armstrong thought that the light was necessary. If a traveller came after ten o'clock at night, he wanted to get into an hotel and the light was necessary to show him where that hoteL was.. If the bar was closed at ten o'clock, it was not to say that a traveller could get no accommodation after that hour. Mr Seymour pointed out in regard to Picton that the Borough was lighted with acetylene gas all night, and he. did not see much use in having a light in front of an hotel when a lamp post was close adjoining. He would move that Mr Cheesman's application be granted. < Mr McKinley strongly, opposed the motion. It was^ he said, an evasion of the law. . There being no seconder to Mr Seymour's motion the application was refused. ; I