CARD PLAYING IN HOTELS

Patea Mail, Volume IX, Issue 1090, 24 September 1883, Page 2

CARD PLAYING IN HOTELS

According to a recent decision by Mr Justice Johnston, games at cards, whether for money or not, are not debarred in licensed houses under the present Licensing Act, The Lyttelton Times thus explains the alteration of thelawin that respect “ In the old Licensing Act publicans were made liable to a penalty for allowing ‘gaining or unlawful games’ in their bouses, the words used being copied directly from an English Act. In the Licensing Act of 1881 the word gaming was omitted, and the penalty attached only to permitting an unlawful game to be. played in a public house. Now what is an ‘ unlawful game’? Does this expression apply to any game of cards for which money is staked ? Certainly not. The courts in England have' decided directly the other way. They have held that the game is not unlawful unless it is fraudulently played or unless it .has been expressly declared unlawful by statute. Various English statutes, from the reign of Queen Anne downwards, have been thus branded by enactment. Among them are old friends, like faro and the famous bassett, synonymous with gambling in the comedies of the eighteenth century. Strange games are also mentioned, such as ‘ rowleypowley,’ ‘ puff and-dart,’ and others. But euchre, being distinctly an invention of the nineteenth century, has naturally escaped the legal censure of the Georgian era. Mr Justice Johnston, therefore, considered that it could not be called an unlawful game.”