SOUTH INVERCARGILL AFFAIRS.

Southland Times, Issue 19500, 14 March 1925, Page 9

SOUTH INVERCARGILL AFFAIRS.

To the Editor. Sir, —In your last two monthly reports of the South Invercargill Borough Council’s meetings, you have referred to a matter of dispute that has existed between Mr Dyson and myself for the past three or four months. My lease of the Tisbury gravel reserve, which I held for a term of 21 years, expired on October 12 last year. I had been paying the rent all along in the months of February and August of each year in advance. My last payment was made on February 8, 1924, and being in advance it carried me to August 1, 1924 ; that left me ten weeks and three days that I owed rent for. I called at Dyson’s office some three or four months ago and offered to pay him that amount and he refused to take the money. He demanded six months’ rent from me, which I refused to pay him. However behind my back Mr Dyson succeeded in convincing the Finance Committee that I was in the wrong, and he was in the right, but I arranged to meet the Committee personally, and I showed the members the other side of the question. The matter has been three times before the Committee and twice before the Borough Council, and the Council has at last decided that I am in «the right and Mr Dyson in the wrong. This is the second time that Mr Dyson has tried to make me pay six months’ rent twice over. Some three or four years ago he sent me a letter demanding six months’ rent from me, and threatening that if the money was not paid within a certain time he would report me to the Council with a view to it giving me one month’s notice to vacate the land. I looked over my file of papers and I came across his own daughter's receipt for the half-yearly rent that he demanded from me. When I showed Mr Dyson his daughter’s receipt for the money he would not admit that he was in the wrong, but tried to make out that I was in the wrong, and he accused me of forcing the money on to his daughter. He was sick at that time, and he sent her down to the office to collect money on his behalf. I will quote one of Mr Dyson’s receipts :

Corporation of South Invercargill, South Invercargill, Feb. 8, 1924. Received from Mr Lewis Mathieson the sum of Two Pounds Fifteen Shillings and Sixpence, being half-yearly rent of gravel reserve to October 12, 1923—-£2 15/6. (Signed) Alfred E. Dyson. You will notice that in that receipt Mr Dyson put me back instead of putting me forward as he ought to have done. I had already made two half-yearly payments of rent during 1923, one in February and the other in August—l am, etc., LEWIS MATHIESON.