HERE AND THERE.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1163, 25 July 1912, Page 22

HERE AND THERE.

At a meeting of the Oroua Licensing Committee on Saturday the application of Mr W. S. Poole was granted for the temporary transfer of his license of the Kimbolton Hotel to Mrs Jane Adams, late of the Cafe de Paris, Palmerston North. ♦♦.* " ♦ ' Two arrests have been made in connection with alleged spirit broaching at the Oruanui siding on the Taupo Totara Timber Company’s railway line. The pillaging of spirits on a considerable scale has been carried on for a long time, but the police have hitherto been unable to catch the offenders. The constable, after a search,- found implements for tapping the casks. Recently a cask of spirits was broached, and the consignee examining it after delivery found that it had been filled up with dirty water. Further developments are expected.,

A man named George L. Johnston was fined £5O and costs £6. 10s at the Taumarunui S.M. Court for slygrog selling. The magistrate commented severely on the offence as a particularly bad case. * * * * Mr William Traill, late of the Wairarapa, and well-known in connection w'ith the N.Z. Permanent Artillery, has recently come into possession of the Red Lion Hotel, Taylorville, Wanganui. Mr Traill’s many sporting friends will be glad to know that the hotel is fast becoming a firm favourite. « ♦ * « Opotiki, on the East Coast, is making steady progress, and the three hotels there are almost always full. They are all good houses, and are at the present time well conducted. The Masonic is now run by Mr Henry Johnston,-an'd is-a most comfortable place at which to stay. It is a free house, ’ and patrons can rely on getting the best liquors procurable. At the Magistrate’s Court, Wellington, Mr Riddell gave reserved judgment in the case of Matthew Livingstone, charged with being a bookmaker in that he had made a’ bet in an hotel. Defendant denied making the bet,- and said he had not carried on the occupation of bookmaker for two years. A fine of £2O was imposed. Mr W. Regan, of the Commercial Hotel, Whakatane, has recently ef-

fected considerable improvements to his hotel, and it now ranks amongst the best on the coast. The present: proprietor has always conducted the house well, and those who have stayed at the Commercial have nothing but praise for the management of the establishment. # * Prohibitionists are the most ungrateful people on earth. They refuse to let the men who mine their coal, who load their vessels and their cars, and who do all the manual labour of the country in sweltering hot weather, have a glass of stimulants. But why should they be our slavedrivers in this “land of the free?” — American Exchange. * ♦ # « Mr D. J. Cooper, licensee of the Shakespere Hotel, and Mr Maurice O’Connor, of the Thistle Hotel, have purchased the Shakespere Hotel from the present owner, Mrs T. Foley, of Mount Eden. The purchase price was £15,500. The hotel, which is a brick building of three storeys containing 30 rooms, has a frontage to Albert Street of 49ft, and to Wynd-

ham Street of 46ft, and occupies aoout eight perches of ground. Taking tile' Albert Street frontage, and estimating the cost of the structure at £7OOO, the price per foot works out at about £173 9s. 4d. * W * A test case was brought by the police at Taumarunui on Thursday last respecting the order of liquor by telegraph under an assumed name. The man Johnston, who was

convicted on the previous day of sty grog-seinug, was charged with this offence. Counsel for accused contended that, according to the Telegraphs Act, it must be shown that a telegram was sent wrongfully, and he ' claimed that anyone going under an. alias could sign by that name without infringing the Act. '■The magistrate (Mr F. O. B. Loughnan) said that the purpose of using a false name.-was an illegal one — namely, to mislead the Clerk of the Court regarding the destination of liquor, and was therefore wrongful in a technical sense. Had the sender been known generally by an assumed name, no offence against the telegraph regulations would have been committed by his using it. He fined accused 10s, with costs. The case is regarded by the police as important, since fictitious names are frequently t.sed in ordering drink. * * * * Judgment was delivered by Mr ' Thompson, S.M., in the case in which William J. White, of White’s Hotel, Foxton, was sued, as a licensee, for permitting the sale of liquor to a Na-

tive for removal. The sale was made by a barmaid to . Tohunga Hingawata Tuparoa, concerned in an alleged assault case, while White was absent from Foxton. The barmaid had already been fined £5 and costs on the two charges, and the magistrate now held that the licensee was legally responsible, even although the sale was made against his orders, and fined him £2 and costs on each of the two charges.

Methylated spirits as a drink seems to be becoming more and more popular in Ashburton. The other day Constable Kidd noticed a man,, who appeared to be recovering from a drinking bout, emerge from a chimist’s shop carrying a bottle of methylated spirits. Asked by the constable what he intended doing with the stuff, the man replied to the effect that he had been drinking, and was going to use it as a “reviver,” whereupon the officer promptly “arrested” the 'bottle. * * ♦ * The licensee of the Royal Tiger Hotel, Margaret Mclntosh, was charged in the Magistrate’s Court, Wellington, on Monday, with having employed an unregistered barmaid. The case for the prosecution was that Miss Millie Wilson, the bookkeeper, was detected by the police serving in the bar. This was admitted by Mr Wilford, who conducted the defence, but the point raised was that she was serving in the private bar, which did not open on the street, and was not a bar as defined in the Act. The magistrate,. Mr W. G. Riddell, dismissed the information. * * * * It is indeed remarkable, says the Wellington “Post,” that, even when not hampered by the present abnormal conditions, our Parliaments seem to have made it a rule , that the first session of a Parliament is not the proper time for a Licensing Bill. 1893, 1895, 1904, and 1910—these are the salient dates in the licensing legislation of the last twenty years. In three cases out of the four the work was done in the second session, the exception being in 1893, when the choice fell on the third. * « * * A North of Ireland orator in a Scottish county constituency has just sought to ingratiate himself with his audience at the outset thus: —“Gentlemen, I am an Irishman. I am proud to be an Irishman, but I am not ashamed to admit that I have a drop of Scotch in me.” And for fully a minute he could not understand what the uproar was about.