NEED FOR PRISON VANISHES AS AREA GETS PROHIBITION

Manawatu Times, Volume LIII, Issue 6668, 23 July 1928, Page 5

NEED FOR PRISON VANISHES AS AREA GETS PROHIBITION

BERWICK JAIL IS IS REPORTED AS PRACTICALLY CLOSED SINCE DISTRICT GOES DRY. ABERDEEN, June 4. How a s ’dry” area in Scotland has resulted in practically closing a prison was reported at a recent meeting of temperance workers in Aberdeen. It was stated that Lerwick prison was practically closed. No woman had been an inmate for ovdr a year and the inspector of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children said that there was nothing for him to report. This result he ascribed to the fact ■of Lerwick being dry. Rosslyn Mitchell, the principal speaker, said he believed all the tendencies of the past three generations pointed to the fact that the human race- had resolved that two things should go—war and drink—and while ho agreed they had work to do he could not help feeling that they need not create the process but accelerate it. Referring to the British Women’s Temperance Association, ho said that some 50 years. ago some people met together and resolved that they would tackle what was then one of the most deeply rooted social habits of the British people. Ho liked to think of the women-sitting round a table deciding to convert the people of Britain to totpl abstinence.

It was the women who first saw that the claim for sociability made by tho alcohol drinker was a false alarm. To-day they were no longer on tho defensive. The monmentum was with them. The opposition was becoming more violent because it i was more afraid. Within 12 months the women would be in a sufficient majority for the changing of the law. If they worked together with energy they would be able to do in five years what men had not been able to do in 5000. ,