Echoes of the Week

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume IX, Issue 692, 11 June 1903, Page 16

Echoes of the Week

(By

"Itburiel"]

The new Police Commissioner, Mr Dinnie, has arrived at an opportune time, just When the annual licensing, meetings are taking place, and 'he will enjoy the opportunity of observing the part taken in the proceedings by the officers under his control. One may hope that he is a man of broad views, and that he will impress upon his subordinates the propriety of always keeping in mind the chief raison d’etre of their existence, namely, the preservation of the peace. The average po-' liceman's practice is to lie low until the peace is broken and then to run in the offenders.

The action of the police in respect of the Bricklayers!’ Arms and Hobson Hotels is most peculiar, and for once the opposition of William Richardson gains by the comparison. It is a most improper thing that evidence not deemed sufficient to support & ease before the Police Court should be led before rhe Committee with a view to prevent the issue of a, license. The,testimony of the police in both cases was most flimsy, and if the Committees could be got to give credence to such tales licensees would be reduced to the necessity of barricading their houses and making prisoners of themselves during the continuance of prohibited hours. Or, as an alternative they might vacate the premises and seal up the doors in the presence of the police. The convenience of ledgers and boarders 1 could not be studied at all.

At last the members of the Hospital Inquiry Commission have awoke to the fact Wat they have been worrying Dr. Collins just a little too much, to the detriment of the patients whose cases he has been obliged to neglect. The Chairman at the end said he did not know why the doctor had been detained so long, and one member suggested that it was in order that he might be made a butt of, whereupon Mr Bollard,, who has more humour than you would suppose, suggested that the Chairman should take his turn as the Aunt Sally. But Mr Garland has no attic salt in his blood, and all he could retort was, “ And you too ! ” A person capable of such repartee is not fit for the position of Chairman of an amusing body like the Hospital Board.

There were some funny figures in the famous Cotillion at the “ Cruelty ” Ball, in the Choral Hall last week. But the one that will be chiefly remembered was that in which teams of men and women were driven by members of the respectively opposite sex. They were gorgeously caparisoned with coloured ribbons, and in the excitement of the game they saw nothing ludicrous in it. But it is observable that male members of the teams blush and dodge round the nearest corner when they see one of their fellow criminals approaching.

We in New Zealand are squirming under the effects of the female franchise, and the long-sighted male persons of New South Wales are now looking forward to a time of evil. An occasional writer in the “ Mail ” says : —“ There was great' enthusiasm in Walgett early in the week. Sir John See, the State Premier, proclaimed that the King had assented to the Woman’s Suffrage Bill. Why Sir John should have gone so far to say so, recalls Weller, junior’s, wonder as to why the charity school boy, in wading through the alphabet, should have gone through so much to learn so little. And now the women have the vote, what are they going to do with it ? With men, universal suffrage has been but a doubtful blessing. It didn’t prevent them from putting Hortense’s son (never mind His pere) over all that was best in Prance during twenty years. As to what female franchise will do in the way of regenerating society, it will be time enough to speak same years after the affair gets in full swing.” >

Freeport, 111. (U.S.A.), breweries' are now selling beer by the pound. This may sound like a joke, but it isn’t, says the Freeport “ Bulletin.” It has long been a sore point with the saloon keepers that the business of the saloons was greatly cut into. A compromise was reached, however, between the saloons and the breweries by which the latter are to be more exact in measuring the beer. It is to be sold by weight instead of measure. One pound, which iai about equivalent to a pint, will cost five cents

The police at Barnsley, Yorkshire, have been making raids on several socalled working mew’s clubs, with the result that five have been suspended—three for twelve months, one for six months, , and another for three. But inasmuch as an appeal has been lodged, they will be kept open as usual pending the result. In the case of the Carlton Club, which consists of two cottages and boasts of a membership of 422 at 5s per year it was proved that when the police visited it on

March 7 forty-two persons were found inside, six of whom were drunk. It was held that the club, which was open from 8 a.m. to 10.30 p.m., or half an hour after the licensed houses were closed, as well as at certain hours on Sunday, was nothing more nor less than “ a drinking shop.” Similar complaints were made against the others. It is pretty well known by this time that under the new Licensing Act all clubs have to be registered, and if they are not conducted properly it is in the power of the magistrates to strike them off the roll.

Usually 7 when we hear of embezzlement by a youthful employee (says the S.M. “ Herald ”), drink, tobacco, gambling, or horse racing are given as the exciting cause, and all the set moral maxims are applicable. The case of a 20-year-old clerk accused of making false entries and appropriating his employer’s funds, which came before the Court last week, should prove most disconcerting to moralists. It was specifically stated that the accused had none of the vices enumerated above. His alleged fall was the consequence of an inordinate passion —shared in common with an eminent New South Wales statesman—for lollies. Should this lead to an agitation to suppress the insidious attractions of the sweet shops ?

A total abstainer by the name of Smythers. who lived in a small northern town in Australia, recently went out on his back verandah to get a drink of water, and was fatally shot by unknown parties. We wonder how many more such warnings it will require to prevent men from looking upons the water while it stirreth itself aright in the cup. If the man had kept a demijohn, it would have been inside, and he would not have gone out on the verandah, and if he hadn’t been a teetotaller he would probably have been up at the local public-house at the time of the shooting, discussing the Victorian railway strike with the village policeman. Teetotallers are in perpetual danger. Gingerpop and soda-water bottles are bursting all over the country and maiming their hundreds. A teetotaller never knows when he is safe.