CITY POLICE COURT.

Evening Star, Issue 3779, 5 April 1875, Page 2

CITY POLICE COURT.

Monday, Atril 5. (Before H. Bastings, Esq., and EL S. Pish. Esq., J.P.s.)

Drunkenness. —Charles Campbell, John Marshall, Tames Wilson, and Ludwio Lensen, were each fined ss, er, in default, twenty-four u Urs J m P r^80rm i e ut; Eliza Woods, 40s, or Miree days; Benjamin Farra and Millioent Russell, each 40s or fourteen days; James Hilton was fined 10s, or forty-eight hours, for drunkenness, and a charge of vagrancy was adjourned till next day to enable accused to prove that he was in regular employment; John Keddie, on charges of drunkenness and of usmg obscene language, was fined 20a, or fortyeight hours imprisonment, for each offence, and dismissed with a caution on a charge of resistSergt. Anderson in the execution of his ““fy? , Drysdale, for being drunk in all Saints’ Church at a few minutes’ past eight o clock last evening, was fined 40s, or, in default, forty-eight hours’ imprisonment. Assault. Robert Simon Hickling was charged by his wife, Elizabeth Hickling, with being illegally on her premises at Dunedin on April 4,—Complainant, in answer to the Bench, said that she did not wish to press the charge: all she wanted was protection. Although she had a protection onier, he still persisted in annoying her. The charge was withdrawn, and accused was then charged with assaulting his wife on April 2. Complainant also asked that he might be bound over to keep the peace.— Accused pleaded guilty, and was bound over to keep the peace towards his wife for six months on his own recognisance of L 2 5; the Bench warning him that if he were again brought up on the same charge he would be sent to gaol for six or twelve months. They advised him to Keep away from his wife. Indecency, James Watson wfts charged with this offence in a railway carriage, on the Port Chalmers line, on April 4. From the evidence of the Guard it appeared that accused was the worse of liquor when he committed the offence : and in answer to the Bench Inspector Mallard said that he had been informed that accused was a very decent man.—Mr Fish slt is a most extraordinary thing that he should have been guilty of tins act. It will be better to amend the information, and bring it under a beach of the Bailway Regulations, so that we may be able to inflict a fine. Under the present charge there is no option but to imprison.— The charge was then amended, and accused charged with behaving himself in a manner which interfered with the comfort of the passengers in the train, for which he was fined L 5, in default immediate distress warrant to be issued. Breach op the Railway Regulations.— Robert Christie, Alexander Phillips, and James Watson were charged with illegally entering a railway-carriage at Port Chalmers, on April 4. Commissioner Weldon said that after the carriage in which he was seated had been locked at Port Chalmers shortly before the 5 o’clock train left for Dunedin last evening, the three men jumped into the carriage through the window which was open. The Bench pointed out that the regulations did not meet the case. They only made provision for the offence when the train was in motion or where tHe carriage window had been opened. There being some doubt as to whether a conviction could lie under the circumstances, Commissioner Weldon asked as the law. was deficient and the accused pleaded guilty, that the Bench would dispose of the case with a caution. —The Bench in adopting this course said that accused deserved punishment, and they trusted that the Government would see fit to alter the regulations so as to make provision to meet wimflai- cases in future.

Neglected Child.— An application was made by James Lewis that Sarah Matilda Hopkins, olios Bright, an infant in arms, might be sent ,to the Industrial School—lnspector Mallard explained that the child was illegitimate, and that the father (Hopkins), a new arrival, had deserted the mother, Sarah Matilda Bright, and gone to Christchurch. The mother had by means of false representations got Lewis’s wife to take charge of the child and then left it with her. Lewis had brought the child to the police station on Saturday night and asked that it might be sent to the Industrial School but at his (the Inspectors) intercession he had agreed to take care of it till that morning. Mrs Lewis’s medical attendant had reported that if she were burdened with the child it would endanger her life. Thus there was no alternative but to ask that the child be sent to the school The mother had acted in a very dishonorable manner, and the police intended to ask for a warrant for her arrest. The child had neither been registered nor baptised.—lt was sent to the Industrial School for seven years, and ordered to be brought up in the Church of England form of persuasion.

By a typographical error the weight of zinc and lead found by the police in the possession of Elisha Harris was stated in our report on Saturday to be 2lb instead of 321b;