SOUTH DUNEDIN W.C.T.U.

Evening Star, Issue 21747, 15 June 1934, Page 6

SOUTH DUNEDIN W.C.T.U.

A meeting of the above was held on Thursday afternoon in Wesley Hall, Mrs Donaldson presiding. _ After the business had been dealt with the president, in commemorating “ White Ribbon ” Day—contrary to custom, which has looked to America—took for her subject the Sydenham campaign, during the period 1887-1896. Yet it was Dunedin that first put to the test the prohibitionary powers of tho 1881 Act. Roslyn elected in 1881 a Licensing Committee, which refused to renew the licenses of four houses in the borough, and Judge Williams held this, action legal and effective. Sydenham subsequently took action. Mr T. E. Taylor and the (theii) Rev. L. Isitt started the ‘ Prohibitionist.’ Mr Taylor mapped out every street in Sydenham, but their initial efforts to take away tho licenses of the borough met with defeat. Plain platform speaking had provoked libel actions, and lawyers were employed by the trade to watch developments. A weak place in the trade’s armour was discovered, and the exposure doubtless contributed to tho victory gained at the licensing poll by the Prohibitionists, who, however, suffered a somewhat severe financial loss by the subsequent tactics of the trade. Friends of the movement had contributed a sum to send the Rev. Leonard Isitt to a world convention in Chicago, and a trip to Maine and the Old Land. The Rev. Mr Isitt gave up this project, resigned his church in East Belt, and perhaps a new impetus was given to the Temperance and Prohibition work of New Zea land when that gentleman toured the country “agitating for amendment in the Act that would recognise the right of the people to decide whether liquor licenses should be granted in their neighbourhood or not.”