TWO DRUNKEN MEN IN SAME CELL

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 2, 4 January 1939, Page 8

TWO DRUNKEN MEN IN SAME CELL

STERN FIGHT RESULTS MAGISTRATE’S COMMENT [ Per Press Association.] WELLINGTON, Jan. 3. Comment on the fact that two men in a drunken condition were placed together in a cell at Mount Cook Police Station was made by Mr. J. H. Luxford, S.M., when witnesses described a fight in a cell between John Paton Hardy and Thomas Francis King. Hardy was convicted and discharged for drunkenness, but was fined £1 for procuring liquor during the term of a prohibition order and fined £2 and ordered to make good the damage on a charge of wilfully breaking two panes of glass valued at 21s, the property of PauJine MacHarper. King, who pleaded not guilty, was fined £1 for assaulting Hardy in the cell. It was stated that Hardy and others were drinking at a house in Abel Smith Street. A constable found a front window broken by a beer bottle from the inside and other windows also broken. “I am not giving any praise to the house for the conduct of the house,” said Sub-Inspector Dempsey. ‘'Mrs. Mac Harper had two black eyes. There was a great deal of damage done inside the house, and there were even holes in the floor.” Hardy said he had come down from the bush near Taumarunui and had no recollection of what had happened. The incidents in the cell were the subject of court proceedings on Saturday. King got a black eye and Hardy a hit over the head with a cell utensil. Hardy needed treatment in hospital. Mr. Luxford remarked that it was fortunate that Hardy did not get concussion or a fracture of the skull. He did not know the conditions at Mount Cook, but it did seem a little startling that men in that condition should be put in a cell together where there was no guard. Something might easily have happened with men in such a drunken state, especially as Hardy had been violent in another place.