N FILTHY FLEMING.

NZ Truth, Issue 170, 19 September 1908, Page 6

N FILTHY FLEMING.

Sent to the Samaritan Hbme. The Vicar of St. Michael's, Christ-' church, telephoned to the police, recently that a person m a condition of booze was making a nuisance of himself on tfcire premises. Accordingly an /arrest , was effected, when George Richmond Fleming found himself captive in J tile clutches ot the law. George R. is a person of dilapidated ap- i pearance, who - speaks with ref arnement and cultivation, and his naice accent seems to cry out m agony against tire squalor and dirt of his .sordid surroundings. Fleming has been going down bill for, some years, and' his decline is attrib- ; uteA to beer. It is doubtful if prohibrtion would have sa*ed> : Fleming, whos% favorite nip is methylated spirit, which can be ; purchased at" most chemist's' for 9d a .bottle. Perhaps it was realty oiur economic system that was responsible, lor strenuous Socialist Jamieson pointed out m the Square on a rcccnV Sunday night that two-thiids ,of America was prohib- I ited, yet the poverty; misery, squalor, and prostrftrtiitti.was as great no\y m the United States as m any- other part of th 4 ■world. T.hese fefiections bring us once more to Fleming's appearance m the Police .Court, where he was charged with being" an idle and disorderly ■person. His only previous Court experience was a line of £10 for supplying a prohibited tailor with beer, and m the absence of knowledge of the man Magistrate Bishop seemed pozzled how to deal -with him. Fleming told the Court that he beionged to Christchurch, and further inquiries repealed the fact that. he had siopt out one nigtft acd~ had one of his feat frostbitten so that he had to.i.be treated m the hospital. Lawyer Doivneliy, who happened to be m Ckftirt,. recalled t&e fact that m earlier times wiien b.e had himself sailed the troubled sea of journal- ./, ■-„.' ism- „ ■ '\ ■..; ere casting ancltqr m the comfortable haven of tite legal, profession he had known, Fleming a smart newspaper \ man, who fell out oif the Fourth ' Estate subse<juedfely, and s became an electrdcian or something. It is surmised that the innumerable banquets reporters have to chronicle bad been the undoing .of Fleming, <■ whose compulsory attendance, at dry, religious bun-atruggles afterwards drove him to drink, r "' . Sta'tion-Sira'geant Johnston remarted that Fleming's trouble now was that he habitually carried a bottle of methylated spirits about with him and .imbibed from the same. ~ . , ™ His Worship was loth to the man to gaol under .such circumstances. "Will you go to the Samaritan Home for a I}im,e ?" he asked the accused. "Yes sir*'*' replied that worthy. Sir Bishop made sure that Fleming •would remain m the Home by sentencing Mm to six months' imprisonment, order 1 suspended during his residence iD the Home for , that period: