TAXIMETER TOO EXCITING.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 187, 12 September 1914, Page 3

TAXIMETER TOO EXCITING.

A housekeeper who disapproved of the .extravagant ways of a taximeter appeared at Marylebone (England) last month.

Her name was Mabel St. Johns, and the previous evening she had found herself at Blackfriars Bridge when the time for her master's dinnor was approaching.

The appointed time was 7 o'clock, and that hour was approaching, so she hired a taxicab and told the driver to take her to Queen's Park.

On the way, said the cabman, she kept tapping the window for him to 'stop, and complained that the "clock" was going up too quickly. "Why, it's going up every minute," she protested.

"Very likely," he replied; "it goes up 2d every quarter of a mile." The continued stoppages resulted in considerable delay, and when she saw that the meter registered ,J/8 she said, "I won't pay it," and walked off to the Harrow Eoad Police Station.

Here she was arrested on a charge of being drunk and incapable.

The woman complained that the cabman used bad language, but the cabman replied that he hadn't-used bad language now for 20 years. '' That is quite a good record,'' remarked the magistrate. '.'lt is a record many of us would be proud of." The housekeeper paid the cabman 9/8, and the magistrate said ho would say uothiner further about the matter.