DENS OF VICE.

Taranaki Daily News, 3 December 1925, Page 11

DENS OF VICE.

NIGHT LIFE IN A CITY. SCANDAL IN MONTREAL. SHOCKING REVELATIONS. By Telegraph—Press Assn. —Copyright. Ottawa, Dec. 1, Montreal City is on the verge of another sensational revelation regarding the administration of police officials, whose dismissal was recommended by Judge Coderre following on last year’s- inquiry, but whom the city’s executive commission refused to dismiss, except a few ordinary policemen. The latest scandal concerns night clubs. With which the city is infested. The liquor laws of the province of Quebec provide that there shall be no sale after certain hours and ban the sale of spirits in any dance hall or club, both of which regulations are openly flouted by so-called clubs, which investigation .shows are the rendezvous of criminals, drug addicts and white slave dealers. The investigators declare that at four o'clock.in the morning they found girls of I's aud 16 years of age belonging to good families hopelessly drunk in these places. The enforcement of the liquor laws is the duty of the Quebec Liquor Commission police, who are making every effort to stamp out illegal selling, but they are handicapped by the fact that the night clubs are licensed by the city police. The scandal lies in the fact that, .while tire law says such clubs shall be closed if they violate the liquor laws, many places remain open after repeated convictions. One place, named Dreamland, was the scene of a murder and hold-up last July. Since then it has been raided 1.15 times, but the only action taken by the authorities was to send three waiters to gaol for a month for selling liquor, while the real proprietors continue to operate, apparently immune from police interference. Further, while the police inspectors themselves recommend that the place should be closed, the chief of police declined to make any move or reveal the names of the club's owners. The ability of the owners to command sums of money is indicated by the bribes lately offered newspaper writers to avoid the subject. Montreal is now asking how such dens of vice continue to operate in deliberate defiance of the law, unless they are protected by the police heads. Meanwhile a member of the Quebec Liquor Commission has made a public statement that every night girls from some of the city’s best families arc taken to these clubs, made drunk and seduced, many of them to sink to the lowest depths of degradation.