BOOKMAKERS FINED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 October 1943, Page 3

BOOKMAKERS FINED

MASTERTON RESIDENTS BEFORE COURT PENALTIES FROM £5O TO £l5O IMPOSED OBSERVATIONS BY MAGISTRATE Charged with having carried on the business of bookmaking, William Brady and Herbert Hirst were each fined £lOO and 10s costs, George Herbert Lavery was fined £l5O and 10s costs, and William D. Darvill was fined £5O and 10s costs when they appeared before Mr H. P. Lawry, S.M., in the Masterton Magistrate’s Court this morning. Senior-Detective W. Kane, who prosecuted, said all the defendants had been perfectly frank with him and had admitted that they had taken bets for the Otaki and Avondale race meetings. Mr T. Jordan, who appeared for Darvill, pleaded guilty. He said that if betting were an evil the State was not consistent in its attitude. It was a Gilbertian situation when £31,000 was put through a gambling machine under State control at the Opaki races last Saturday, yet for carrying on a similar practice, men were that morning brought before the Court under semi-criminal charges and a licence levied in the form of a fine. Mr Lawry said the anomaly of allowing betting through the totalisator was frequently being pointed out. If betting were an evil it was no more so through a machine. The law provided for a fine up to £5OO or two years’ gaol. The offence was not in the same class as the evil of theft or housebreaking. The ’ objection to betting from the legislative point of view was measured by the fact that a man could be sent to gaol for two years. Whether the prohibition on betting was to try to curb the gambling tendencies of the people or to drive revenue through the catching machine of the totalisator was something which one could only guess. The law was there and it was not for the Bench to comment on it but to administer it. Mr Lawry said that under the circumstances he would impose a fine of £5O and 10s costs in Darvill’s case. Mr R. McKenzie appeared for Hirst and endorsed Mr Jordan’s remarks. A fine of £lOO and 10s costs was imposed. “I am not conscious of doing any moral wrong,” said Brady, who was not represented by counsel. He said he was merely meeting a public demand. He was also fined £lOO and 10s costs. Mr Jordan also appeared for Lavery who was fined £l5O and 10s costs.