PRINTING PRESSES

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 89, 12 October 1934, Page 10

PRINTING PRESSES

MUST BE REGISTERED

OWNERS PENALISED

Several Wellington printers received a costly reminder in the Magistrate's Court today that the law requires them to register their printing presses. Pleading guilty to keeping unregistered printing presses, Esmond Joseph Connolly, Neil Westwood Craig, Wilfred Franks, Thomas Knudson Garrett, Ernest Eraser Jones, Frederick Beavisdolph Mackay, Thomas George Eicketts, the T.P.E. Printing Co., Ltd., the Commercial Printing and Publishing Co., the Meet Printing Co.-, the Art Printing Co., and McKenzie Thornton Cooper were each fined the minimum of £5.

Before the charges were read, Mr. P. Keesing, on behalf of four of the defendants, suggested that all the charges should be withdrawn. Most printers wera entirely ignorant of the section of the Act requiring registration of a printing press. The law came into force in 1868, and had never been altered. There was no similar provision in the English law. The minimum fine was £5 and the maximum £.20, and according to the Act half the fine had to go to the informant. No warning had been given to the defendants, who were reputable business people, and although there was no obligation on the police to issue a warning, it was usual for them to do so.

Mr. S. W. Fitzherbert and Mr. S. A. Wircn endorsed tho remarks of Mr, Keesing.

Detective-Sergeant T. Y. Hall said that the full facts of the cases had been reported to the Commissioner of Police, who had given instructions for the prosecutions to be brought. A number of the defendants were reputable printers, but some were not known, and one had a press in a motor garage. A number had registered their presses since receiving their summonses.

Mr. W. F. Stilwell, S.M., saia he could not support counsel's .suggestion that the charges should be withdrawn. It was surprising that men in the printins; trade did not know an Act which affected them so vitally. It was not for the Magistrate to question the advisability of the law; he had to administer it as he found it.

Three other defendants pleaded not guilty1 and their cases were to be heard later today.