FLO WAS FED UP

NZ Truth, Issue 1203, 20 December 1928, Page 10

FLO WAS FED UP

Dave Was Blunt and Cast Down AND THE GRAMOPHONE CHURNS ON (From "N.Z. Truth's" Special Christchurch Representative). Dave and Flo. were^ sweethearts for three, years. Then he lost his job — and soon afterwards, his girl. The love-lorn looks they were wont to exchange faded out, and, instead, they looked at each other with lack-lustre eyes, if not with a dag-gers-drawn •expression. Affection cooled, love's young dream turned into a nightmare, and— but listen to their story, as told m the Christchurch Court.

FLORENCE NEWMAN, a 22 -year-old flapper, kept company for three yaars with Dave Weir, who is about her own age, and nothing seemed to darken the path of unadulterated boy and girl love until Dave lost his job. • When this disconcerting event occurred, the affection cooled ■ off as quickly as hot dog m an ice chest. Dave sent back all Florrie's presents m a hurry — threw them at her, she said— and lie asked lier to return a gramophone he had given her. Hinging on that gramophone is- a story more amusing than any comic disc which ever revolved inside the instrument. : Dave's quid pro quo m the argument •was the girl's handbag. Some latent commercial instinct urged him to secure himself against total loss,- so at a convenient moment he took charge of her handbag and told her he -would retain it until she stumped up the gramophone. Florrie resented Dave's conduct, and applied to Magistrate H. P. Lawry to have her Lothario bound , over' to observe the peace. A short, sprightly girl, Florrie stepped briskly into the _ box to ' tell her , story. The trpu.-l c started, she said, because Dave did , not come to meet . ■ . " •. her at a dance, and left her the *w_ole week-end to herself. Dave had given her a gramophone as a present m 1025, a kind of peace offering, so that he could go to the races. When the. break m relationships occurred, Dave asked for the instrument back, and when she refused, ! he,, met her .one day m Tuam Street' and snatched her bag. • ■■ A few days later he stopped her on the street when she was accompanied by a friend, Ivlrs. McGillan. "I asked my friend to stay with me as I was afraid of him, but he told her to push off as she knew nothing about it, and he called- her a liar," the girl said. Florrie went on to relate .further incidents, when Dave had molested lier, and mentioned one occasion when he had taken her coat and bag. These, however, had been returned. Lawyer Roy Twineham . (f or Weir), cross-examined the girl. "Weir wag good to ybu, while he was keeping company?" he asked. "yes, as a friend," replied Florrie. He took you to the Dunedin Exhibition, and on a trip to Auckland, and on

Afraid of Him

another to Wellington? — Yes, but no more than a friend would do. You are not above using bad laniguage yourself, are you? Florrie admitted that sometimes she had occasion to summon the aid of. a few superlatives. "But he couldn't say a word without swearing and I never swore back at him,"' she added. I suppose when he got out of work he was not able to .buy you any whisky? "I don't drink," 'indigpantly retorted Florrie. "The only time I've had drink was at a party." I think the trouble arose when he was unable to give you the things you wanted? conjectured counsel. > Florrie assured Lawyer Twyneham that he was barking up the wrong* tree. "It was his own fault," she said. "He never bothered about me then, so I didn't want him." He gave you a suitcase—. Florrie interjected with a correction that Dave delivered the present m true caveman spirit. He "biffed" it at 'her. When the lovers decided that their affections for each other no longer existed, Dave sent back all the presents the girl had given him. These, ■ . - also, she declared, were thrown at her. Ruby McGillan, a fellow-employee of Florrie's m. the tailoring department of the. KaiaI poi woollen factory, declared that Dave was a bully, and she had always found Florrie a nice, quiet, . agreeable girl.. ■ ■ ■ Iris Campbell, a girl friend contributed her account of Dave's policy of molestation, while Florrie's mother, Clara Newman, said she always thought Dave to be a nice boy, and even now she did not really know anything bad about him. "It was when he star.ted hanging round the place at night and my husband had to get up pne night and put him out that I changed my opinion of him," said witness. Lawyer Twyneham commented ' on the fact that the mother allowed her daughter to go with Dave to Dunedin, Auckland and Welling* ton. Mrs-. Newman replied that when a boy went with a girl he didn't go with. the whole family. "I trusted Florrie and I trusted him," she said. Magistrate Lawry declined to make an order. "The young lady is quite able to Stick up for herself," the S.M. commented iwhen Lawyer Bowie pleaded that the girl feared further molestation.