POLICE CURFEW.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1098, 17 May 1913, Page 4

POLICE CURFEW.

NEW YORK’S ALL-NIGHT RESTAURANTS CLOSED.

By order of Mayor Gaynor, New York’s all-night restaurants, which have long been a feature of the Broadway night life because of their daring cabaret performances, were closed by the police at 1 a.m. an April 1. This is the effect of an order that all restaurants must close at 1 a.m., except ten in various parts of the city which cater for the all-night workers. These must give guarantees of full respectability before licenses will be granted to them. The mayor’s order has caused dismay among the restauranteurs, who will lose thousands of pounds nightly. They have been reaping small fortunes by doubling and trebling the ordinary menu prices b.tween midnight and daybreak and providing patrons with turkey trot dancers and young women singers, who perform on the floor among the diners. Mayor Gaynor defends his action on the ground that the allnight resorts are used by disreputable people. He refuses to qualify his description, although an eminent Uuited States Senator and a number of other prominent politicians were among the patrons turned into the streets by the police when the 1 o’clock a.m. curfew was enforced. The diners jeered the police and hissed Mayor Gaynor. One restaurant proprietor was threatened with arrest because, when the police were mixing with the crowds on the sidewalk, he shouted: “ Watch vour pocket-books.” The restauranteurs intend fighting the edict in the courts.