GAMING CHARGES

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 90, 10 January 1935, Page 4

GAMING CHARGES

Hairdresser Fined £5O BETTING MATERIAL FOUND For using his shop in Ghuznee Street as a common gaming house, Joseph Mc,Cabe, hairdresser, aged 69 years, was fined £5O by Mr. W. F, Stilwell in the Magistrate’s Court yesterday. Detective-Sergeant T. Y. Hall stated that on December 28 he and Detective F, Hayhurst had visited accused’s shop and had seized a quantity of betting material. They found evidence that on December 26 he had taken 286 bets valued at £73/2/6, on the following day 127 valued at £3B/5/6, and by 11.45 a.in. on the day of the detectives’ visit 44 bets had been recorded, their value being £9. “Accused has been running his business for a number of years, and has been before the court once before,” said Detective-Sergeant Hall. McCabe answered that he had discontinued the practice altogether, but Mr. Stilwell imposed a fine of £5O,

Caught in the act of collecting a dividend, when the detectives arrived, Frederick William Harding, watchman, aged 65 years, appeared on a charge of being found on the premises, and Mr. A. B. Sievwright pleaded for leniency for him. Harding and a workmate had each put 1/3 on a horse and had won £l, he explained. “I am afraid this is going to cost you your winnings,” the magistrate remarked to Harding when fining him £l. Charged with keeping his saloon as ,a common gaming house, Herbert Fletcher Tomlinson, aged 53, proprietor of the Empire Billiard Saloon, was fined £5.

Detective-Sergeant Hall said that accused kept a good saloon, but had had a “fruit machine” in a rear room, and although he had been warned that it was illegal, he had allowed people he knew to play on it. He had sold the disks for 3d. each and had redeemed the winnings in cigarettes. Tomlinson had been in ill-health for some months, and the machine bad not been used regularly.

Mr. Meltzer, who represented accused, said that it was not a case of a man who had deliberately set out to flout the law. When Tomlinson had been warned that tho machine was illegal he had put it In a back room, and had only allowed close friends to use it and on rare occasions. He had had more than his share of illness. Mr. Stilwell convicted accused, and, in imposing the fine, said the case was one for a smaller penalty than usual. He ordered the destruction of the machine.