Landlord and Traveller.

Feilding Star, Volume XV, Issue 337, 12 June 1894, Page 2

Landlord and Traveller.

♦ ■— THE CASE AGAINST W. H. SAUND. EBS DISMISSED. Mr Martin, S.M., at Wellington, delivered judgment on Saturday in the case in which William H. Saunders, licensee of Saunders' Hotel, Johnsonville, was charged with having refused accommodation to a traveller named Alfred J. E. Brown on Sunday, tho 27th ultimo. His Worship said that the landlord had deposed that when Brown told him he bad money to pay for bis bed, he replied " All ri»ht ; it you have money you can have a bed inside. I'll go round and let you in." The witness Greer, who was called for the prosecution, had corroborated the landlord to some extent, stating that be heard him say, "There is a bed inside." The landlord "'went inside by the back and opened the front door for Brown, who had by this time gone some distance, and was walking away from the house. The landlord's evidence was uncontradicted; it was to some extent corroborated by that of Greer, , and it waa admitted by Brown that the landlord said something. On these facts His Worship could not hold defendant guilty. Neither did he think he was liable to a penalty for the conduct of his wife in refusing Brown, as undoubtedly she did, a " shakedown " in the first instance. The defendant's contention in the present case was that his wife thought that Brown wanted to get a night's lodging without payment. The defendant's wife was not called as a witness, so that he could not say this defence was proved, but the inference she was alleged to have drawn from Brown's conduct and conversation was a reasonable one. Tlie information was therefore dismissed.