LEGAL & MAGISTERIAL NOTES

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XI, Issue 512, 11 October 1900, Page 19

LEGAL & MAGISTERIAL NOTES

Edward Francis King, licensee of the Empire Hotel, Christchurch, pleaded not guilty to having on August 31st, supplied intoxicating liquor to John Frederick Forman, when the latter was in a state of intoxication. The evidence of four witnesses showed that Forman, after having visited several hotels, went to the Empire Hotel in a drunken state about 9.30 p.m., and was supplied with three glasses of beer and lemonade, and a bottle of beer. An hour earlier he had been met by an acquaintance who wisely took most of his money from him and sent it to his wife. The defendant and three other witnesses stated that Forman was either sober or not much the worse for liquor when he was at the Empire Hotel- Mr Beetham said that the case was a very bad one; defendant would be fined £lO, and his license would be endorsed.

There can be no doubt that round about the London docks there is a lot of liquor sold by people who have no right to retail either beer or spirits, and the practice can only be put down by inflicting a heavy fine or a sentence of imprisonment. As far back as March, 1896, Margaret Adams, who resides at Shadwell, was fined £2O, and £3 3s costs, for selling spirits without a license ; but this did not prevent her from resuming her profitable occupation; indeed, from the time she was convicted up to last month, when she was again before the Thames Police Court, it is believed that she has been carrying on this illegal traffic. On this occasion she was fined £5O or three months’ imprisonment for selling spirits, and £2O or two months for selling beer, and it may be hoped that these heavy sentences will serve to put a stop to a practice which must have deprived the local publicans of a considerable amount of their legitimate trade. Not long since, no doubt many of the Trade will remember the circumstances, a hotelkeeper from South was convicted and fined on a charge of having sold liquor to an intoxicated person. He appealed, and it remained for the Chief Justice of our colony, Sir Robert Stout, to decide the puzzling question of when is a man drunk within the meaning of the Act. The Chief Justice who, it may be remarked, has been a teetotaller all his life, solved this difficult problem, and he decided that the wording of the charge which read, “ already in a state of intoxication,” meant the state in which, through intoxicating liquor, a person had lost normal control of his mental and bodily faculties. In the case in question, the person was capable of asking and paying for more drink, and it could not be assumed that a man was completly intoxicated when he could either ask or pay for more. Taking this view of the case, the Chief Justice upheld the appeal, and the conviction was quashed. It is refreshing to have such an opinion from one in such a high legal position. Doubly so on account of, as before mentioned, the abstinence principles of His Lordship. No better evidence could be tendered than this ruling, to 'show the difficulty which besets licensed victuallers and their employees in the task of distinguishing an intoxicated person.