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Hokitika Guardian, 20 December 1920, Page 1

A WOMAN SMOKER. LONDON, Oct. 10 Summoned at Westminster yesterday for smoking in a railway carriage not set apart for that purpose, Miss Eveline Bagge, 78, Duke-street, Grosvenorsquare, W., was ordered to pay two guineas costs. Mr Rutherford, for the L.B. and S.C. Railway, said it was the first time he had prosecuted a woman for this offence.- Miss Bagge was a first-class passenger from Horsham to Victoria, and alone in the carriage was smoking a cigarette, when other women, two of them mistresses of a girls’ school, were placed in the compartment by the guard. The new arrivals pointed out that it was not a smoking carriage, but, continued Mr Rutherford, Miss Bagge persisted in smoking, and remarked that everybody now smoked in the tube. Thereupon one of the women flicked the cigarette and holder from Miss Bagge’s mouth out of the window.

Mr Purchase, for Miss Bagge, saidi she was a first-class passenger and was alone when the guard put in five other persons with third-class tickets. Thinking of the recent change of regulations as to smoking in railway carriages, she understood she was entitled to smoke. One of the women made “some remarks” and deliberately knocked Miss Bagge’s cigarette and five-guinea gold and tortoise-shelf holder'but of her mouth on to the line. ‘Naturally, continued counsel, in these circumstances Miss Bagge’s attitude was not so conciliatory as it might have been. This incident would be the subject of other proceedings, as the cigarette-holder was lost. It was a regrettable matter on both sides, and the court was asked to deal with it without recording a conviction.

Mr Chapman, agreeing that it was a regrettable matter, said he would ,do that.