FOUR HUNDRED POUNDS

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 8, 31 March 1927, Page 1

FOUR HUNDRED POUNDS

WHITTA PLEADS GUILTY

PROSECUTIONS AT CHRISTCHURCH

Press Association CHRISTCHURCH, Today Pleading- guilty to a charge of bookmaking, Alfred Vivian Whitta was fined £4OO and costs by Mr. E. D. Mosley, S.M., in the Magistrate’s Court. John Henry Bott and William Henry Cousins, who were employed by Whitta in business, were fined £75 and costs, and £25 and costs respectively.

The charges against Whitta, who is aged 30, were that, on March 16, being the occupier of premises known as No. 11 Royal Exchange Buildings, he kept the same as a common gam-ing-house, and that on March 16 he carried on the business of bookmaking. John Henry Bott, aged 54, was also charged with being the occupier of the same premises, and keeping them as a common gaming-house. William Henry Cousins was charged with assisting in the management. The Crown Prosecutor, Mr. A. T. Donnelly, said Whitta had .been carrying on an extensive bookmaking business for a number of years. Apparently in 1920 his father was convicted of bookmaking. Whitta himself was convicted and sentenced to three months’ imprisonment for keeping a common gaming-house. The sentence on that conviction had been remitted

by the authorities, but the conviction itself apparently still stood. Business was apparently carried on between the tobacconist’s shop which Whitta ran in the United Service Building, and two rooms in the Royal Exchange Building. The police raided the Royal Exchange Building, and found extensive evidence that Bott and Cousins were carrying on the betting business. Whitta went round to the police after their arrest, and told them that Bott and Cousins were only servants of Ills. 1,000 BETS A DAY “It is admitted by Bott that he sometimes took 1,000 bets a day md had 2,000 clients,” continued Mr. Donnelly, “he took 15,000 bets in the last two months.” Contrary to the custom with bookmakers charged, Whitta had pleaded guilty and elected to be tried here.