TRICKS OF THE TRADE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2813, 12 February 1908, Page 13

TRICKS OF THE TRADE.

In the case of the Oxford Club Hotel, Lonedale street, Melbourne, before the Reduction Board on October 31, 1907, Robert Fitzgerald, husband of the licensee, deposed that he had had four years' previous experience in hot-el matters. Twenty-four sixpmnv drinks could be got out of a bottlo of whisky and a dozen of scdawater, bo that what cost 4s 2d could be sold for 12s. If anvonc asks me to have a drink I take brown sarsapanlla. That costs lid a bottle, and I get five drinks out of it. Thd other fellow thinks lam drinking stout. If I .am asked to take whisky and soda I tfike limeiuice and soda I have not been doing the selling myself. We had two f?cod barmaids. I don't suppose I would have sold two ' bob's ' worth myself, The fellows like to talk to the ladies. The Chairman: Do you consider the profits you have «poken of are fair? Witness : It's all in the g-ame I know of where a bottle of champagne was sold for 10s to a man, and the same bottle was brought in seven times altogether, filled with dry ginger ale, so that the man paid 70s altogether. "Were you there 9 _ "I brought him some of it myseit. "You don't think there is anything wrong about that?" . "Not if the man does not know the difference."