THE CORPORATION AND PLACES OF AMUSEMENT.

Evening Star, Issue 3091, 15 January 1873, Page 2

THE CORPORATION AND PLACES OF AMUSEMENT.

To the Editor.

Sm,—Having advertised in your paper last week my intention of having a ball at St George’s Hall, on the night of the 13th inst., to which my friends and patrons were to be admitted by ticket, the same caught one of the eyes of our Argus city officials, and Mr Special Kanger and Constable Bain were requested to wait on me and demand thi sum of live shillings, license f-e under the Licensed Theatres Ordinance, 1862 and 1870, and the Otago Local Revenue* Urdinahce, 1872. In vain did I try to convince him that it was not a stage play, or, in fact, a concert, but, in the language of Mrs Charles Torrens, only a little ball in honor of my departure from this blessed spot, to which all are in> vited to come and swell the population, and which has been described by one °f ° u * 1 immigration agents as aland' flowing with milk and honey, and the road' (I mean thd old coach road to Port Chalmers) lined with luxuriant fruit trees, in fact, an orange grove, where there is work for all, very high wages, and where taxation has not yet, or « ever likely to find, its way. . I need hardly tell von Mr Editor, that this, like many other statements made by paid agents, has not one word of troth in it, but that I, or rather

Mr Bailey, the lessee of St George’s Hall, was compelled to pay the live shillings, is a fact, as I bold the receipt, signed by Mr Massey, Town Clerk, who assured Mr Bailey the words “other entertainment of the stage” carried it, and it must be paid, or a penalty of LoO would be. the result. 1 consider this a dead robbery, for there is no stage unless an ordinary platform is a stage ; and if so, every tea meelmg at any place of worship or other building to which the public is admitted by ticket is as much an entertainment of the fctage as was my dance, and equally liable, so also the ball given by the citizens to his Excellency, the Masonic Ball, and the many others of a kindred nature which have been held, and for which no such demard has ever been made If the City Council really are in want of funds, I would advise them to send their Inspector of Nuisances to some of the licensed theatres, one of which literally stinks with dirt; and the admission tickets thereto have to my knowledge been in use many years, and are so disgracefully dirty from long use that they are sufficient to cause disease by contagion, Let the Council first make the really license ! theatre what it should be before they endeavor to str in a point to pocket five shillings, 1 am, &c., Francis J. We ale, Dowling street, Jan 15, 1873.