WOMAN SENT TO GAOL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 May 1941, Page 6

WOMAN SENT TO GAOL

CHARGE OF OBSTRUCTING POLICE ADDRESS AT PROHIBITED MEETING. CHRISTIAN PACIFIST SOCIETY. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. . Stating that he did not intend to consider the sex of the accused and that she must be treated in the same way as any other person who set herself above the law, Mr J. L. Stout, S.M., sentenced Constance May Jones, a clerk, aged 20, to three months’ imprisonment on a charge of obstructing Superintendent Lopdell in the lawful I execution of his duty at a Christian i Pacifist, meeting in Maimers Street on Friday night. Superintendent Lopdell said Barrington, secretary of the Christian Pacifist Society, had made a boast in the Supreme Court the other day that the next speaker would be a woman, and consequently on Friday night quite an expectant crowd gathered, some apparently out for a bit of fun. The accused commenced to speak. He'prohibited the meeting, but she refused to cease and was arrested. The reason for the prohibition in the first instance | was because of an intimation he had received from Barrington, setting forth as one of the purposes that New Zealand should withdraw from the war at once and that the assistance of all people should be enlisted to that end. As that purpose was to his mind subversive, and he feared subversive propaganda at meetings and that public disorder would result, ho decided that a meeting under the auspices of the society should be prohibited. The defendant pointed out that eight men previously before the Court had all been charged with conducting or attempting to conduct a prohibited meeting.

Superintendent. Lopdell said they had decided to be as considerate to her as they possibly could. The charge was a matter for himself and the authorities.