Pictures at Napier

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 23, 11 June 1908, Page 10

Pictures at Napier

A decision given by Mr. McCarthy, S.M., at Napier on June .8 will, it is hoped, prove a salutary warning to those traders who exhibit in their windows pictures of a kind calculated to wither the fair flower of purity in the hearts of the young and impressionable

members of the community. ' The penal laws ', said Mr. McCarthy, after a ' review of the evidence in the case (including that of the police and several non-Catli-"olic clergymen), ' are directed not against the virtuous, but the vicious, and this statute is intended to protect all, whether old or young, who are liable to fall under the malign influence of immodest prints and literature. To trained and pure minds, the contemplation of such works has not a harmful effect, but to the untrained — more particularly the young — continuous dwelling thereupon creates prurient and obscene thoughts, which not infrequently lead to acts of lust and - crimes of violence. The strong meat of the classic art is not for the delectation of the- society weakling.' One picture, the subject oj < the prosecution, could not (the magistrate said) *-tff any stretch of imagination be termed a work of art, and the fact that this was exhibited with others compelled him to find that all the pictures exhibited by the defendant were immoral and indecent, and intended to have an immoral and indecent effect. A fine of 10s and costs was imposed.