SIX MONTHS’ HARD LABOUR

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 192, 10 May 1921, Page 4

SIX MONTHS’ HARD LABOUR

A BOOKMAKER’S SENTENCE

“ WHITTA DEFIED THE LAW”

By Telegraph— Press Association. Christchurch, May 9.

William Whitta who was convicted of carrying on the business of a bookmaker in Christchurch, was sentenced by Mr. Justice Herdman to six months’ imprisonment with hard labour, and also ordered to pay the cost of the prosecution. In appealing to Mr. Justice Herdman for leniency, Whittn’s counsel, Mr. C. S. Thomas, said that for years gambling and bookmaking had been carried on in New Zealand from one end to the other. “Tho Legislfttlure in the past tried to curb it and bring it wihin reasonable bounds,” said Mr. Thomas, “but, I am afraid, without success. The reason, no doubt, is that gambling is a national failing, and Is taken part in from the highest to tßio lowest. It is only by the mosif stringent measures that the Government will control id YVhitta’s offence is a statutory one, not a moral one. It is noil allied to the ordinary criminal offence. Two wrongs, of course, do not make a right, but thousands of men up to the itime when last session’s Act was passed, had committed the same offence. Betting has been going on and has been looked upon ns one of the things at whicih the Legislature winked. It, is realised now that the Legislature will noil wink at it in this court. You have granted probation to thieves, rogues, and vagabonds—to the ordinary criminal—and I ask you i|o extend to Whitta the same clemency as you extend to men guilty of criminal offences.”

The Judge said prisoner had been before the Court on several occasions in connection with offences relating to gambling. It was clear from the evidence that prisoner and his son had carried on the business of bookmakers extensively. Prisoner knew the state of the law, and had deliberately made up his mind to defy it. He would take into consideration prisoner’s age, and the fact that this was the first case of the kind in which a jury had found an accused person guilty.