PRURIENT PUBLICAN.

NZ Truth, Issue 64, 8 September 1906, Page 4

PRURIENT PUBLICAN.

WHAT MAY HAPPEN TO A BARMAID.

Helpless Girl Compelled to Submit to Employer's Hateful Embraces.

Barmaids seeking employment, and not being desirous of bein<r submitted to enforced adultery with their employer, will do well to leave one Hawke's Bay township out of their calculation.

Because there is a hotelkeeper up that wav Avho, though a married man with a family and living under the same roof with his .wife, makes intimacy with his barmaids a sine-qua-non of their retaining their position ; and as few girls are so advantageously fixed financially as to be able to defy the threat of heinn- turned out of the house without character or wages, at daylight, it is almost a cel'tainty that this night prowling ruffian should and does succeed m his vile intentions.

So it was with the handsome and ladylike young woman who has come to "Truth" with the story of her shame at the hands of this licensed, lecherous, loathsome lump of human vileness. She was accompanied by a younp- man, an eno-ineer by profession, but who, beine; out of work and an American, took anything that offered rather than loaf around, and the first thing that offered happened to be the berth of . kitchen/man at the hotel alluded to. He has a grievance too. He was selected for the billet, and was told on the second day of his engagement there that he would have to go at the end of the week, because he refused ,to add to his own duties those of the day porter. He thus earned the niggardly wage of 17 6d and it cost him just that to reach Wellington again. He is how engineer of a coastal steamer.

But what brought the man to this offioe was not so much his own tricky treatment as the shocking fate of his fellow servant, the barmaid. It appears that he and his mate happened to see the publican leave the barmaid's room at midnight, m his p^iamas, and he told her of it, when s.he made tonown to him her pitiful story. On Sunday, August 26, the landlord had gone to her room— she had only just taken the position and therefore offered by her freshness a spur to his lust— and forced himself m. She ordered him to leave her apartment when he brazenly told her that unless she consented to intimacr- he would turn heir out at daylight. As she was absolutely without money, and had 1 no means of gettinir back to Wellington, she was forced to yield herself to his hateful embraces. He only stayed ten minutes or so, being probably afraid that his wife, who occupies a room adjoining his, with her children, might happen to awaken and discover his absence from his room ; and as he left he was seen by the kitchenman and his mate. These two kept watch again and at 2 a.m. on the Wednesday nie-ht following saw him enter and watched him leave the girl's room, wearing only his pyjamas..

tln the morning the 'P-irl was told by the kitchenman of what he had seen and she told the publican he had been watched. He then, m a great state of trepidation, offered her £10 to clear out by the express, as, if the story got about he would lose nis license. The object of this is obvious. If he could have got rid of the girl and the man had exposed him, it would have been his word against that of a servant under notice of discharge and he could have brazened it out. But as it happened the fellow reckoned without, the girl's sense of outrage and loathing and she flatly refused to be bought off and hustled away, but waited and left at the same time as her fellow servant who accompanied her to Wellington and brought her to this office.

Is this a fit man to hold a publican's license and to have young working women practically at the mercy of his lust ? js a question the police should ask . of the licensing committee. He is notorious, it also appears, for ill-treatine- and chousinc his employees, but as he keeps hand and glove with all the pot-bellied, red-nosed J.'sP. of the place it has always been found useless to take him to court. Even m this kitchenman's case he tried to cut him out of his week's pittance but soon dropped the subject when dared to carry out, the snarlin? sucfestion.