LIQUOR FOR MAORIS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 596, 23 February 1929, Page 1

LIQUOR FOR MAORIS

LICENSEE FINED £5 KING COUNTRY PROSECUTION (From Our Resident Reporter) TE AWAMUTU, Friday. For procuring liquor for natives in a prohibited area on January 23 last, Robert Henry Lee was fined £5 at the Te Awamutu Police Court on Friday. Dick Paea and Te Whakanui Kawhata, of Otorohanga, charged with aiding him in the offence, were each fined £2 by Mr. Wyvern Wilson, S.M. Lee admitted that the liquor had been sold while he was in the hotel. One of the Maoris telephoned, saying he had just come from the country, and that he had a great friend at the railway station who-wanted six bottles of beeV for a party. Witness sold the beer, he said, on the distinct understanding that it was for the white man, whose name he preferred not to give, at the railway station. The evidence, said the magistrate, disclosed one bad feature —that it was the custom in Te Awamutu to take beer to the men at the railway station. It was only a fair inference that the Maoris themselves would be guests at the white men’s party, and he held that Lee knew perfectly well that the Maoris would drink the liquor.