LABELLING LIQUOR.

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 319, 10 December 1910, Page 3

LABELLING LIQUOR.

A FIRST CASE. At the Magistrate's Court, Te Kuiti, on Thursday, before Mr F. O'B. Loughnan, S.M., Walter Brown, a German labourer, was charged by the police with bringing liquor into the King Country improperly labelled on December sth.

Mr Finlay, for defendant, pleaded guilty, but under extenuating circumstances. Defendant had visited Te Awamutu and returned with four bottles of whisky and four bottles of beer in a sugar bag. He had asked the barman at Abbott's Hotel to label the liquor for him and the barman had refused. A Mr Patterson wrote out the label: This bag contains beer and whisky. Defendent explained the circumstances and said he was pretty drunk at the time. Constable Matthews asked him what he had in the bag and he told him. The label he found in his pocket.

Thomas Patterson said he wrote out the label as described and tied it on the bag. A further witness gave similar evidence.

The magistrate said it seemed the bar keeper had not the ordinary civility and kindness to label the bag for him a man who was drunk. Patterson had done that for him and, of course, Brown being drunk, was a victim of his friends, who wanted drinks. He opened the bag at the station to give the coachman a drink, and then gave drinks in the train and on arrival made some random statement to the police, who were very naturally on the alert. It was the first day when the new regulations had come into force and it should be a lesson to defendant who would ask himself whether it was worth while going down to those places to get drunk and bring up whisky. Defendant was convicted and discharged.