PROCEEDINGS IN BANKRUPTCY.

Waikato Times, Volume XVII, Issue 1444, 4 October 1881, Page 3

PROCEEDINGS IN BANKRUPTCY.

Re Thos. Dawson's Discharge. At a sitting of the District Court, Hamilton, in bankruptcy yesterday afternoon, at which His Honor Judge Macdonald presided, Thomas Dawson, lately a publican in Hamilton, applied for a certificate of discharge. The application hart been adjourned from a previous sitting so as to enable a statement of accounts to be made up. Mr O'Neill appeared m support of the application, and ATr Hay on behalf of Mr William Gumming, an objecting creditor. The statement of accounts was produced. In reply to questions put by counsel for the opposing cieditoi, tlie bankuipt stated that on or about the month of Januaiy last he wiote the lettei pioduced to Camming, stating utti) alia th.it he bad paid a-\v i\ as much as £12,000 to Ryan Kelt and Co. for -wine and spa its and to bib brewers for beer. In making tlinfc statement lie spoke fioin memory, not having gone into the niattei caicfully. At best the statement could only be cillfd a rough guess. He could not e\cn take upon himselt to say the amount was a fair appioximate. Supposing the sum to be unieet lie could not take upon himself to say what profit ought to have accrued thereupon. That depended upon the quality of the liquor. He did not think the piofit would represent 100 per cent. Out of £12,000 paid in that way ho could not, taKe uj>oii himself to say a profit of over £0,000 would be made. It all depended upon the quality of the liquor, and he had been supplied with a bad quality of both spirits and beer, so much c o that he had had occasion to change l.ii biewer. His piivateexpenditure dining the 4'> yeai.s he was in busines 1 * was set down .it €670. That simply represented the clothing and education of his family. Pood, &c. was supplied out of the hotel accounts. Witness had no capital when he went into the business, and he had sever tl debts hanging 1 over his head at the time. Out of the pioocrds of the business he paid debts of that description amounting to £100. The (joint : Then in that respect you weio simply acting on the piinciplo of robbing Peter to pay Paul. Examination continued : The fust year I struck a balance, and found I was £200 to the bad. A large pioportion of the old liabilities weic paid befoie making that discoveiy. My reason for not , stopping when I found myself going to the bad was that I had hojjes the tunes would improve. In 1876-77-78 I did a »good trade, and still I was getting behind. I impute this to the fact that I gave a large amount of credit I ought not to have done. Since the date of filing I have not received any outstanding debts. In further interrogation the debtor said he had recovered some of the outstanding debts since November 4th, but only a trifling amount, ceitamly not of £100. Thomas Hammond was also examined rclath eto the accounts. He imputed applicant's insolvency to the extravagant price lie had to pay for his supplies, the repairs made on the premises, and other reasons attubutable to the fact he was a man ti ading without capital. William Camming, the opposing creditor, deposed that during the time applicant had been in the hotel, he consumed about a fourth more beer than had been got quit of by the previous tenant. Despite that fact, the previous tenant had, in the course of the three years he Was in the house, amassed between £2000 and £3000. The rent had been increased when Dawson went in from £2 10s to £5 per week. Witness himself had been a publican, and was competent to speak as to the profits of the trade. Interrogated : What is about the average profit made on beer ? When sold by the imperial pint, the average is equal to 100 per cent., and when sold by the glass, it is even more. Interrogated : What do yon reckon the average on beer sold by the glass ? It depends to some extent on the sire of the glass. I would put it down at from 130 to 150 per cent. In further examination, witness stated he would rather not enter into details regarding the average profits made on the sate of spirits, as an additional duty of 2s per gallon had been imposed since he was in the trade. In reply to the Court, witness taid he did Dot know whether to impute applicant's difficulties to extravagance or mismanagement, all he wanted was to investigate what he had done with the money taken during the time he had the

house. He had no ground for supposing the debtor had put past a purse, thereby defrauding the creditors. By Mr O'Neill : I consider the previous tenant (Burke) to have been more of a business man than Dawson. He (Burke) had been in the hotel business previously, for a short time at least. Witness believed that Burke had expended nearly as much as Dawson did in repairs upon the house. He could not s.iy whether he kept the same number of servants Dawson did, but he knew that he kept a sufficient number for the requirements of the place. Counsel having addressed the Court, His Honor granted the application as craved. In doing so he alluded to the different points in dispute The payment of £400 of old debts he said was not altogether a creditable doing; still it might in one sense be justified on the plea that he desired to sustain his credit, seeing he had entered upon a new line of business. The objection that he began business without capital was also overruled, on the ground that he had not represented himself to be a capitalist, a circumstance fully disclosed by the fact that before getting into the house Gumming insisted upon a bond with sureties being entered into. The further objection that he was not a business man must have been known to the creditors, so that in trusting him the fault was theirs quite as much as his. The fact that he kept on trading after he found himself in difficulties was reasonably well answered by the statement that he had grounds for believing times would improve. Again, the creditors must have had sus])icion of hii circumstances, as bills had to be renewed, and the creditors | otherwise experienced difficulty in getting their money. Nothing whatever in the shape of fraud, in the way of making up a purse, had been made out. There was some allegation about an estate ha\mg been purchased in Ireland out of the proceeds, but no foundation had been shown for that allegation. Allusion was then made to the fact that Camming was the only ci editor who opposed, after which His Honor said : "I do not see any ground for withholding the application, except indeed for this one extraordinary circumstance, and even then I am not by any means clear the banktupt is responsible for it. A letter has just been delivered to me from a person Ido not know, but judging fiom the handwiiting I should say the writer is a person of some education. It is written impoi tuning me to giant the discharge. lam not clear as to what I ought to do about that letter. It is a most improper piocedurc. and if I thought the debtoi had anything to do with it I would make it at least a giound foi postponing the application. Ido not, however, see any leason for assuming he has. The discharge is therefore granted. Mr 0 Neill said the debtor knew nothing whatever about the letter referred to, to which His Honor retorted that in granting the discharge lie had acted upon that assumption.