DEPTHS OF DEGRADATION

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 2312, 3 December 1925, Page 4

DEPTHS OF DEGRADATION

MONTREAL SOCIETY GIRLS. POLICE GRAFT SCANDAL. [By Electric Cable—Copyright.] [Aust. and N.Z. Cable Association.] OTTAWA, December 1. Montreal city is on the verge of an other sensational revelation regarding the administration of police officials, whose dismissal was recomriiended by Judge Codorre following on last year’s inquiry, but whom the city’s executive commission refused to dismiss except a few ordinary policemen. The latest scandal concerns night clubs, with which the city is Infested. The Province of Quebec’s liquor laws provide that there shall bo no sale after certain hours, and they ban tlisalc of spirits in any dance hall or club, both of which regulations are openly flouted by so-called clubs which Investigation shows are the rendezvous of criminals, drug addicts and I white slave dealers. The Investigators declare that at four o’clock in the morning they found girls of 15 and 1G years of age belonging to good families, hel]i£essly drunk In these places. The enforcement of the liquor laws is the duty of the Quebec Liquor Commission of Police, who are making every effort to stamp out Illegal selling, but they are handicapped by the fact that night clubs are licensed by the city police. The scandal lies in the fact that, while the law says such clubs shall be closed if they violate the liquor laws, many places remain open after repeated convictions. One place, named “Dreamland,” was the scene of a murder and a holdup last July. Since then it has been raided 115 times, but the only action taken by the authorities was to send three waiters to gaol for a month for selling liquor, while the real proprietors continue to operate, apparently immune from police interference. Further, while the police inspectors themselves recommend the place to be closed, the Chief of Police declined to make any move or to reveal the names of the club’s owners. The ability of the owners to command sums of money is indicated by the bribes lately offered to newspaper writers to avoid the subject. Montreal is now asking how such dens of vice continue to operate in deliberate defiance of the law unless they art protected by the police heads. Meanwhile a member of the Quebec Liquor Commission has made a public statement that every night girls froV’ some of the city’s best families are taken to these clubs and made dj«nk and many of them sink to the lowest depths of degradation.