ON LICENSED PREMISES.

Taranaki Daily News, 31 May 1921, Page 7

ON LICENSED PREMISES.

THE BREAKWATER HOTEL CASE. DEFENDANTS FINED £L The adjourned hearing of the charges against Albert and Ambrose Loveridge of being found, on the Breakwater Hotel ■premises after hours on May 12 was continued before Mr. C. R. Orr Walker, S.M., in the New Plymouth Magistrate’s Court yesterday. Senior-Sergeant McCrorie appeared for the police, and Mr. C. H. Croker represented defendants.

Mary A. Hammond, wife of the licensee of the Breakwater Hotel, said that on the morning following the police visit she made an entry in the bedroom book that the Loveridges had stayed on May 11. They had been guests, but she previously omitted to put their names in the book, and she admitted making the alteration believing that the book might have to be produced as the result of the police visit. She knew that the date was hot the one in question, as the day of the police visit was May 12, and the names were already entered for that date.

Counsel remarked that the witness apparently had made an alteration concerning a date which was not in question.

His Worship said that such an alteration might have been made with'the idea of showing that the men had stayed at the hotel on more than one night. After further evidence was given by Mrs. Hammond, His Worship proceeded to review the facts of the case. He said that defendants had set up the defence that they were lodgers, and they had to satisfy him that they were bona fide guests at the time they were found on the premises. It was clear, of course, that they stayed there that night, which was an obvious procedure after being found by the police. The evidence of defendants themselves, the unreasonableness of their suggestions, and the unsatisfactory and contradictory nature of the evidence of the licensee and his wife, did not leave him convinced that the Loveridges were bona fide lodgers.at the time the police called. A conviction would, therefore, have to ;•? entered. He would have been inclined to inflict the full penalty, in view of the unsubstantiated nature of the evidence for the defence, but one of the defendants was a married man, and the other was out of work, and a fine might fall heavily on them. Sometimes the defendants in'such cases were not altogether to blame, as they were often induced by licensees to set up a defence for their sakes. Each of the defendants was convicted and fined £l, costs 7s.