ILLICIT SPIRITS

Waipawa Mail, Volume XLIX, Issue 152, 14 September 1928, Page 2 (Supplement)

ILLICIT SPIRITS

HEAVY FINES IMPOSED FIFESHIRE "STILL" RAIDED. LONDON, Aug. 21. For running an illicit still at a lonely cottage at Dairsie, near Cupar, Fife, for the manufacture of spirit and for concealing spirits with intent to defraud the Revenue, Thomas William Kenny, alias Ryan, stationer, 17 Capel Street, Dublin, was at Cupar Sheriff Court last week fined £SOO or six months’ imprisonment. He had four previous convictions for the same offence, three at Glasgow and one at Kilmarnock. Robert Stewart, formerly publican, Overgate, Dundee, and William Armstrong, alias Little, builder or slater, Dundee, were each fined £l5O or three months’ imprisonment for the same offence. Stewart, who tried to escape when the cottage was raided, was fined a further £2O or 14 days’ imprisonment for assaulting police officers. Mr L. C. Nicoll, Government analyst from London, a witness, said the spirit was 7.5 over proof, and resembled potheen. The duty payable on such spirits was 75s per gallon. Kenneth Farquhar, who purchased Stewart’s public-house business for £1350, said he had to pour out eight gallons of whisky, whic-li he ha.d paid for at the rate of B.ls per proof gallon, because his customers would not drink it. Little had offered him spirits, which he said he got from Glasgow at 24s per gallon. Witness tasted it, and described it as "awful stuff.” Little told him that Stewart had got some of the stuff.