SKATING RINKS: MR PLIMPTON'S ENORMOUS PROFITS.

Evening Star, Issue 4113, 3 May 1876, Page 3

SKATING RINKS: MR PLIMPTON'S ENORMOUS PROFITS.

All through the past week (says the London correspondent of the * Exeter Flying Post ’)the Rolls Court has been packed with rinkers interested in the mechanism of roller skates and those mysterious contrivances by which you are enabled to go through the outer edge without the risk of breaking your neck. Mr Plimpton, the American inventor, filed a bill in Chancery against MrMalcolmson, the proprietor of the second Brighton Rink, for infringing his patent in one detail, and after two or three day’s argument, has succeeded in proving the infringement. There will probably be an appeal, and roller skate case will be as great a source of revenue to the gentleman of the long robe as the capsule cases were a few years ago, and as Ritual cases were till the Public Worship Regulation Act was passed, for I hear that Mr Plimpton intends to have a shot at all his rival patentees in turn, and I believe there are fifty-five of them in the patent office. It is said that Mr Plimpton is making LIO,OOO a-week by his skates, and I can quite believe the statement, for if you want to open a rink you must pav him L 250 to begin with as the price of a concession to use his skates, and then you must pay him royalty on every pair of skates you use in the day, and you must buy those skates from his manufactory at his price—a fancy price of course—and you must keep them in order. He estimates his profits from the use of skates alone at one of the Brighton nnks at L2OO a-week, ami every town in the country has rinks, some of j them th ee or bur, and all of them I crowded all day long, 2