SALE OF SPECTACLES

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24904, 18 June 1946, Page 3

SALE OF SPECTACLES

FINE OF £7/10/- IMPOSED

(P.A.) DUNEDIN. June 17. A salesman of spectacles, Percy Gerald Hendra, aged 60, of Wellington, was convicted by Mr H. W. Bundle, S.M., in the Magistrate’s Court to-day, on a charge that, not being a registered medical practitioner oran optician, he sold spectacles to Marie Elizabeth McDonald “in respect of whom he had employed methods for the estimation of errors of refraction of the human eye.”

Hendra said in evidence that he had sold 1500 pairs of spectacles in Otago and Southland during the last six months, and that he had been following this occupation throughout New Zealand for 35 years. Hendra was fined £7 10s with costs £1 Bs. and witnesses’ expenses ss.

The police produced a statement made by Hendra, in which he said he had continued his activities after amendments to the act came into operation in 1942, but he did not carry a test case or a trial frame. His system was to allow his clients to experiment with glasses from his stock until they found a pair or pairs to suit them. That was the system in use in department stores. He had been prosecuted on similar charges twice before, six years ago in Palmerston North, and 10 years ago in Ashburton, and both charges had been dismissed. He was not a registered optician, and did not claim to be one. but he maintained that the spectacles which he sold were of the best quality, and he claimed that he 4iad as much knowledge as any registered optician in New Zealand.