BALMORAL HOTEL RAID

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 March 1943, Page 3

BALMORAL HOTEL RAID

AN APPEAL DISMISSED. OTHER CASES REMANDED. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. An appeal by Phoebe Manawatu, aged 25, whose husband is on active service overseas, against a sentence of two months’ imprisonment imposed on her on Monday by Mr W. F. Stilwell, S.M., on a charge of assisting in the management of a house of ill-fame, was dismissed by Mr Justice Northcroft in the Supreme Court yesterday afternoon. The appeal was one of the sequels to a police raid on the Balmoral Private Hotel. In a judgment his Honour said that he could not sustain the appeal, because he considered that the appellent had definitely and deliberately elected to accept the position she took -after being a voluntary lodger for two months. On the appellant’s own statement, the place was being used as a brothel in an extensive way. Forty-three of the 48 rooms available had been let to servicemen who brought girls to the place, and it must have been apparent to anyone, unless that person was very stupid indeed, that the place was a brothel. It was impossible to believe that the appellant when she took up the position, did not know what she was doing. Remands until April 5 were granted in the Magistrate’s Court yesterday by Mr W. F. Stilwell, S.M., in the cases against Sarah Anne Vangioni, hotel proprietress, aged 54, Reta Hoban Jacobsen, cashier, aged 19, and Patricia May Love, domestic, aged 24. Vangioni is charged with permitting the Balmoral Private Hotel to be used as a house of ill-fame, and the other two with being in a house of ill-fame for the purpose of prostitution.