BETS IN A HOTEL
LICENSEE FINED £25 STATUS AS RACEHORSE OWNER (By Telegraph—Press Association) CHRISTCHURCH, Thursday. “Quite often where reputable persons make one slip the racing commission lifts tlie ban,” said Mr E. C. Levvey, S.M., in the Magistrate’s Court this morning when Oliver Francis Watson, licensee of the Lancaster Park Hotel, and a racehorse owner, pleaded guilty io a charge of using the public bar of the premises as a common gaming house. He was fined £25. The magistrate’s remarks were made in reply to counsel who said the conviction would affect Watson as a racehorse owner and debar him from attending meetings. He asked the magistrate to consider this when deciding on the penalty. As the result of complaints, said Detective-Sergeant Sinclair, the police had placed the hotel under observation. Within a month or more the police discovered that 24 bets had been taken. The largest of these bad been for 10s. The police intended that the prosecution should be a warning to other hotelkeepers who were carrying on in the same manner.
Watson told police he had taken the bets to oblige customers. If he had not done so his customers would have gone to another hotel. Watson had not been in any sort of trouble before. Apparently accused was not in business in a big way.
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Bibliographic details
Waikato Times, Volume 124, Issue 20715, 27 January 1939, Page 10
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220BETS IN A HOTEL Waikato Times, Volume 124, Issue 20715, 27 January 1939, Page 10
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