POLICE RAID SLY-GROG PREMISES

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 290, 5 September 1942, Page 4

POLICE RAID SLY-GROG PREMISES

Women And Sailors PRISON SENTENCE FOR PROPRIETOR

The use of premises at 52 Cuba Street for the sale of sly grog to sailors, American servicemen and young women, resulting In a brawl in which

an American was knocked unconscious, was described by Senior-Sergeant T. Campngnolo when a sailor, Kenneth Charles Parsons, was charged yesterday in the Magistrates’ Court, Wellington, with two'breaches of the Licensing Act. He pleaded guilty ami was sentenced to one month’s hard labour. “It is one of . the worst cases for some time,” remarked the senior-sergeant. The place had been rented as a music studio, but when it was raided the police discovered 117 empty beer bottles, 18 bottles of wine and other liquor. Many of the 30 people present were under the Influence of liquor and among them was one girl of 17 years. The doors and the walls of the passage were fitted with peep holes so that those arriving at the premises could be closely examined. The police stated that Parsons had tried to throw suspicion on one of the other men present by indicating him as the proprietor and a constable had restrained him from jumping from a window. A plea that Parsons, as a man who had served in the merchant marine, in the course of which he was injured, knew the lack of entertainment in Wellington for visiting seamen was made by°Mr. G. C. Kent. The rooms had been rented for only a short time and had freed twice sub-let for parties, he said. He considered that it was better that the men should have been there than wandering the streets with nothing to do. . A sailor, Leslie "Robert Haywood, found on the premises, was fined £2. It is understood that tho police aie proceeding against three other men and two women on similar charges.