South Canterbury Times. TUESDAY, JAN. 13, 1880.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2124, 13 January 1880, Page 2

South Canterbury Times. TUESDAY, JAN. 13, 1880.

Cobn’Eß-men may be an invaluable institution in connection with certain kinds of amusement, but their proper place is the stage. When they descend from before the footlights to the foot-path, corner-men are apt to become an intolerable nuisance. The professional corner-man is decently attired, keeps a clean skin beneath his black pigment, and by bis lively antics provokes harmless amusement. The corner-man of the foot-path is usually a hulking, greasy specimen of humanity, as dangerous to nib elbows with as a journeyman baker or chimney sweep. The stage artist makes the air resonant with the music of his bones and banjo; his base imitation of the street makes the atmosphere naseous with the fumes of bad tobacco, and the public pathway abhorrent with expectorations. One excites mirth by the recitation of small witticisms and connundrums, and the other excites disgust and loathing by his maudlin remarks or obscene observations. With the corner-man of the stage we have nothing to do. He has his legitimate place in society, and he knows how to keep it. It is to the corner-man of the foot-path we desire to address ourselves. It is very generally admitted that the society of corner-men in Timaru has grown to the dimensions of an intolerable nuisance. Not only are the public streets after sundown becoming dan-

gerous to women and children, but the footpaths are rendered disagreeable to their proprietors. Much travelled visitors to Timaru are accustomed to remark that 5h no other place in New Zealand has the institution of corner-men attained such offensive proportions. The cornermen themselves are probably unaware of the fact that their presence nightly for hours lounging about the corners of the streets constitutes a public e3 r esore. We can assure them, however, that such is a fact. Perhaps, after all, the corner-men are not so much to blame as the somewhat somnolent authorities, whose passive attitude has conveyed the impression that the public street may be converted into a private club-house with impunity. In any other place, we believe, except Timaru, the congregation night after night of the same forms and faces at the same corners would lead to a mild reminder from the gentleman in uniform that street obstructions of the intellectual order came within the range of the Vagrancy statute. In this town, however, the corner-men appear to think that they have a vested right to the most useful and important portions of the public thoroughfares ; and it is a singular thing that they never assemble on the w rong side of the street, or on spots where the traffic is generally inconsiderable. On the contrary, they' esteem it a privilege to obtrude themselves wherever the throng is greatest and the traffic busiest. Of a week night, when the weather is dull, the meetings of corner-men arc generally badly attended ; but on Saturday evenings, when the weather is line and the

town is busy, they muster in splendid force, and usually make *an alarming display of their obstructive tendencies. In calling attention to the cornermen of Timam and describing a few of their idiosyncracies, we have no dcsiro to deal otherwise than tenderly with the institution they have established. We have no desire to see it wiped out with the policeman’s baton, although if it could be improved out of existence by some milder process the result would be beneficial. But we trust the corner-men will have the good sense, on reduction, to perceive that it would be to their own advantage, by the establishment of a Working Men’s Club or some kindred place of resort, to turn their leisure moments into some better channel than the edge of the street channel. If the camera-obscura of public opinion would only enable them to see themselves as they are seen, they would avoid haunting the same flags and windowsills and kerb-stones evening after evening. But if a regard for the public welfare will not induce them to leave off the practice of converting themselves into corner obstructions, the members of the Town Council should be petitioned to provide for them in their bye-laws, in the same way as they provide for cabmen, and appoint certain stands to which they would be confined, and which the ratepayers would be able to avoid. Byl imposing a license, and keeping a register of their names and addresses, the society of corner men might be saved from degenerating into a public nuisance as it is doing. It is quite evident that something must speedily be done. Either the cornerman must be induced to abolish himself, or he must be suppressed by the policeman, or else the Municipal authoties must take him in hand, and exact a small for the privilege that he enjoys of monopolising the most valuable portions of the public thoroughfares.