Untitled

Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 358, 16 June 1877, Page 2

Oun readers will observe by a perusal of our advertising columns that the Common Lodging-houses Ordinance, ISG2, and the Amendment Ordinance. 180-i, together with certain bye-laws passed by the Municipal Council, are now in force in the town of Oaniii.ru. The measures that have been adopted to rid Oamaru of what might without impropriety be termed the lodg-ing-house scourge are stringent, but not more so than the exigencies of the case demand. Lodging-housis have, we should think, become exceedingly pro 14 .table ; but this is due mainly to their transmogrification into common drinking - shanties. Their proprietors not only escape the necessity of paying the ordinary hotel license, but they are enabled to sell their vilest of liquor at all hours in defiance of the restriction attaching to the liquor trade. It is not diilicult to realise the effect that such a state of things would have upon any community. In our case, some of the houses in question have become dens of immorality, whilst, unfortunately, only a few of them can be said to be sufficiently respectable to aspire to the designation of decent common lodging-houses, some of them being very " common" indeed. We believe that the Ordinances wo have -just named will be so administered as to become a terror to evil-doers, and that the result will bo that lodging-house-keepers will keep within the bounds of their legitimate business, and that justice will thus be done to the publicans' legitimate trade.