Heavy Fine For Selling Raffle Tickets

Chronicle (Levin), 24 June 1949, Page 5

Heavy Fine For Selling Raffle Tickets

HAMILTON, June 24. A fine of £50 was imposed by Mr. S. L. Paterson, S.M., in ihe Magistrate's Csurt, Hamilton, today on George Henry Jew, Waikato Trotting Club secretary, of Hamilton, who admitted a charge of selling a ticket in a lottery. Margafet Winifred Jew, daughter of defendant, was fined £5 on a similar charge. • The prosecution was the out'come of a raifle for a motor car in aid of the Catholic Church carnival. The magistrate referred to counsel's request that a conviction should not be entered. He said that he was not able to follOW up that course, and felt it was his duty. to enter a conviction and impose a substantial penalty. The offence was not in any way trivial, there being no distinction between running a raffle and selling a I ticket in it. He was not aware |_that raffles were an established instltution for church purposes for rnany years and he was very sorry if they had been. I One of the causes of the present high cost of living, he believed, was1 the large amount of gambling, and lotteries of this nature were an encouragement to people to spend money and live beyond their means, said Mr. Paterson. They required higher wages to make up their losses in gambling. Mr. Paterson thought that there was a big difference between a small raffle between a group of frieirds in the same building and the sale of tickets in a public office to complete strangers. The fact that the proceeds were for church purposes was no mitigation of the offence. To refrain from entering a conviction in this case would in effect amount to favouring sections of the Gommunity.