BOOKMAKING CHARGES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23887, 15 August 1939, Page 10

BOOKMAKING CHARGES

EXTENSIVE OPERATIONS FINE OF £2OO IMPOSED GIRL CLERKS EMPLOYED <Per United Press Association) PALMERSTON N., Aug. 14. "This man is in a big way. We make no excuse for saying that he is easily the biggest in Manawatu and one of the biggest in New Zealand. He has agencies in every centre of consequence in Manawatu, North Wairarapa. Rangitikei and even as far as Hastings. His business is carried on quite openly, we say brazenly. This man flaunts the law. He has no regard for it at all or he would not be allowing young girls to break it every hour of the day. It is one of the worst cases of bookmaking I have met with in my 23 years in the police force. He has not even the decency to employ male attendants to answer the telephone." This comment'was made by Detective Sergeant Meiklejohn in the Magistrate's Court to-day when Charles Joseph Williams was charged with carrying on the business of a bookmaker. He pleaded guilty and was fined £2OO. Three young women clerks on Williams's premises were each fined £5 on a charge of being found on premises used for bookmaking. Harry MacDonald Essex, on a charge of using his premises as a common gaming house, was fined £75, the magistrate saying that the volume of business showed that the defendant was in a fairly big way. Stanley Frank Lincoln, a butcher, charged with using his premises as a common gaming house was fined £25. According to the police statement he was an agent for Williams.