GAS THROUGH HOSEPIPE

Taranaki Daily News, 20 July 1933, Page 5

GAS THROUGH HOSEPIPE

MARRIED MAN’S OFFENCE. COMMENT BY MAGISTRATE. Waihi, July 18. An admission that he had altered and f fitted up pipes for the reticulation of gas in contravention of the borough by-laws was made by a young married man, William Bernard Osborne, when he appeared before Mr. F. W. Platts, S.M., in the Waihi Magistrate’s Court to-day. The gasworks manager, A. T. Harvey, said that a hosepipe had been connected from the service main to defendant’s house. Pipes and the meter had been removed at the end of the previous tenant’s occupancy, as was the , usual practice when houses were left empty, and Osborne had failed to pay the fee ■ to have the meter reinstalled. A meter had now been put in. Defendant’s counsel, Mr. F. C. V. Clarke, said the offence had been committed on a wet, cold night, when there was no fuel in the house and food had to be prepared for young children. “It was a reckless act, for which there is no excuse,” said the magistrate. “A meter could have been put in in the proper maimer or else defendant should have seen to it* that, as other people do, he had a supply of firewood. He could have been prosecuted for theft.” Defendant, whom the police gave a - good character, was fined £2. and costs and was allowed two months in which to find the money.