THE EMPLOYMENT TO FEMALES ACT.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4183, 17 August 1874, Page 3

THE EMPLOYMENT TO FEMALES ACT.

The following is the report given by the West Coast Times of the case of the Police v. Kosh, recently heard in the Hokitika Court under the Employment to Females Act : This was an information laid under tho Employment to Females Act, 1873, and alleging that the defendant did employ certain females after the hour of two o’clock in the afternoon of Saturday, tho 25th of July last. The Act in question states - amongst other things, that no person shall employ any female after two o’clock on Saturday. Sergeant ISlane deposed to his having entered the work-

room of the defendant about 4 o’clock on the afternoon in question, when he saw the girls in the employ of defendant’s wife engaged in dressmaking. It was elicited by defendant’s counsel (Mr. Purkiss) that they were employed in making dresses for, and raider the directionof customers, and out of material provided by the said customers. Mr. Purkiss, in addressing the Bench for the defendant, said that the interpretation clause of the Act enacted that the word “ employ” should apply “to all kinds of manual work and labor in the preparing or manufacturing articles for trade or sale.” He first of all asked what did defendant do? He, through his wife, converts fabrics, tbe property of third pco|4c, into dresses, &c., for them, tinder these circumstances he submitted that his client did not come within the meaning of the Act as one employing females in preparing or manufacturing articles for trade or sale. No doubt, if defendant’s -wife employed females to make up dresses, &c., out of material purchased by her, and then exposed them for sale in her rooms or window, the defendant would clearly come within the meaning of the Act. But herein was the difference ; he employed them to do something about a third person’s property, not in preparing articles for trade or sale. These girls certainly were not engaged preparing articles for sale. Were they then preparing articles for trade ? He submitted unquestionably not. He asked what was the meaning of the word “‘trade,” and showed conclusively that neither in its t«clmical nor popular sense could it apply to the case in question, where simply the defendant’s wife, through her girls, converted the fabric of other persons into dresses. To bring the defendant within the meaning of the Act as one employing females in the preparing or manufacturing of articles for trade or sale would necessitate such a straining of what the words “ trade” or “ sale” meant as to take them altogether out of their technical and popular meaning. He proved this by demonstrating what the most approved dictionaries of the English language give as the signification of these words. He finally submitted that the Act under which defendant was proceeded against was a penal one, and, as such, should receive a strict interpretation ; that if any doubt upon the object the Legislature sought to can-y out by the Act arose, that doubt should be in favor of the subject and against the Crown. Things which did not come clear within the meaning of the words of a penal statute should not be brought within it by construction. The law does not allow of constructive offences, and in this case the defendant could only he made liable by making the circumstances under which he was informed against a constructive offence. His Worship, in delivering judgment, said, taking it as a fact, and ho must necessarily upon the evidence take it ns a fact that the defendant, through his wife, only employed his girls in dressmaking—that is converting customer’s dress stuffs into convertible articles; and looking at the'interpretatiou clause of the Act vmder which the information was laid, which limited its operation to those employers who employed females in “preparing articles -for trade or sale,” he- could come to no other conclusion than that the defendant was not such au employer of labor as the language of the Act expressed, and consequently the information must be dismissed. A similar information against Joseph Lang was withdrawn at the request of the police.