CRICKET AND COMEDY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21144, 30 September 1930, Page 13

CRICKET AND COMEDY.

SEQUEL TO SUNDAY GAME. PLAYER DENIED MARTYRDOM. deprived of prison term. Mr George Hall, a member of the Manchester City Council, who recently was fined, with the alternative of prison, for playing cncket on Sunday, is not to go to gaol after all. 6 The fine was fl or 13 days, and Mr Hall was given 14 days in which to pay, Thm he vowed he would never do, and he made all arrangements for going to pnson. His friends, also, had made their own arrangements. They were to serenade him with a brass band on the following. Sunday, and Mr Frank Mailings. “J eaor ’ w * u knowu in opera, oratoria, and concerts, was to take a special concert party to the prison. All.was in vain. The day before Mr Hall was to go to prison—which, as it happens, was his birthday—the whole daborate programme crumbled to pieces. t/r th !r fi « e was » aid —l>y somebody else. Mr Hall was far from enraptured by this back-handed birthday gift. The offence for which he was punished was cncket, but this decidedly was not In fact, he describcd.it as “a mean and dirty tnck. It was only at noon that he learned that the fine had been paid. It had been whispered that this had been done the previous day, but Mr TT ft li in. dignantly denied this. “1 have given instructions that no fine has to be paid for me,” Mr Hall said and no fine can be paid.” When he up the police, however, the calm official reply came: “Tour fine has been paid. The councillor was staggeredI have broken the law," he said, “and I claim that I must go to prison.” The official was firm. It was their duty only to collect the fine, and their position was that as the money was offered they accepted it, and that was an end of it There were various reports as to the identity of the person who thus snatched the nimbus of martyrdom from the councillor’s brow. An alderman, an ex-Lord Mayor, and a platoon of city magistrates were variously impugned. It was stated, however, that the culprit was an innocent old lady who went tearfully to the court saying that she was one of Mr Hall’s greatest admirers in his crusade for Sunday games, and that she thought he ought to be at liberty to carry on his work.* Mr Hall, however, was not thus easily to be cheated out his self-immolation. For on the following Sunday he was going to Platt Fields, in company with another George Hall, there to engage in a spirited game of bowls, 21 up, for a prize.