"SCHOOL" DAYS

NZ Truth, Issue 1146, 17 November 1927, Page 9

"SCHOOL" DAYS

Bookmakers' Secretary Misses Double *'..

(From "N.Z. Truth's" Special ,Dunedin RepO Thomas Drummond went to school — and came home late. He" also came home broke, if not a little ; financially bent. The money which a trusting wife had lent him. to "start an indent business with" was non est. The "school" had got \ it. i Probably he had learned his lesson from that admirable — . though illicit— institution.^—- — DUT Alice Beatrice Drummond, a rev spectable, hard-,w:6rking woman, hafl worked hardyfor that too-easily dissipated little hoard of silver pieces. Thus spake she to Mr. Justice Sim at Duhedin," when asking for a severance from her husband on the ground :6f desertion^ "•* Formerly, she? said, Thomas Drummond, who did not appear ; to contest his wife's' suit, was an indent agent, but m 19/16 he was .appointed secretary of the Bookmakers' Association, receiving for his services £8 p\r week. He hung on to this job" until 1923. But it was m 1919 that she had'foynd it imperative to go to work and by tfie~ time hen husband had ceased being secretary\she was glad she had taken up a posiijion, because he did not do any work; neither did he suggest doing any other work; One Sunday night a flioker of v hope was allowed to oross her fea- . tures when her husband at last intimated that he would do something. He proposed starting again In an indent business, he said.- , ' Of course, it required money and m a few moments his wife had given him £35. '"■■.'.■ , . ■ The following Tuesday he blandly informed her that he had^lost it all at a "school." , At Easier, 1924; Drummond went away to Auckland- With the exception of one letter penned immediately" after he arrived m the Queen City, he had not written to her, asked her to go to Auckland or, given her any maintenance. ; She was granted her decree nisi.