Putting Disorderly House In Order

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 412, 21 July 1928, Page 1

Putting Disorderly House In Order

THREE WOMEN CONVICTED

PENSIONER’S “KINDNESS OF HEART” As a consequence of a raid on a disorderly house in Good’s Lane, off Vincent Street, three women and two men appeared before Mr. W. R. McKean, S.M., at the Police Court this morning. Margaret Speakman, alias King, aged 29, Gertrude Dorothy Taylor, aged 35, and Mary Noary, alias Clark, aged 58, pleaded guilty to consorting with reputed thieves and people of bad character . Norman Clark, aged 36, pleaded guilty to having insufficient means of support, and James Cummins, an oldage pensioner, pleaded not guilty to a similar charge. Sub-Inspector McCarthy said that Clark had been a cook on the Tofua, which he left after an accident. With the compensation which he was receiving he had rented a house in Freeman’s Bay, where he had given shelter to the other accused. Complaints from neighbours had necesistated a change of locality and the party had shifted to the house in Good’s Lane. “If men such as this did not rent houses to give these women a place to congregate the evil would not be so serious,” concluded the inspector. Clark urged that he had given the women shelter from “pure kindness of heart,” but the Magistrate declined to belieye the statement. Taylor, Noary and Clark were sentenced to two months’ imprisonment. Speakman, who had a long list of previous convictions, was sentenced to three months.

“I am not so sure that you are as innocent as ypu look,” said Mr. McKean in dismissing the charge against Cummins, who said that he was merely renting a room in the house.