British Hotel, Finniss Street, North Adelaide, 2007

State Library Catalogue Reference: B 70498

Jenny Scott, photographer.

The oldest license in North Adelaide, the British began trading in December 1837. The building in this photograph dates from 1883.

'STOUT FOR BLIND WOMAN OF 96
Sunday Sale Brings - Only 5/- Penalty because a bottle of stout, obtained from an hotel on -Sunday,- August 9, was for a helpless and blind woman, aged 96 years. Mr. E. M. Sabine P.M., in Adelaide. Police: Court this morning imposed a. nominal fine of 5/ on the seller of the liquor, whereas the minimum penalty is £10. Lily Cameron, a cook employed at the British Hotel, Lower North Adelaide, had been charged with the unlawful sale of liquor, being an unlicensed person. She pleaded guilty. Mr. A. Lenthall (Police Prosecutor) said that Constable Slaven saw a woman walking down-the right-of-way at the rear of the hotel. She had a bottle of stout inside her coat. On returning to the hotel Cameron confessed that she had sold the woman the liquor. Defendant said in court; The woman asked me for a bottle for her mother, and I let her have mine, without taking any profit.
The woman who purchased the stout was Pauline Todd, married, of Finniss street, Lower North Adelaide. Charged with having carried away liquor on the same occasion, she was fined 5/, the minimum penalty being £5. Mrs. Todd pleaded guilty by letter, in which she said that the stout was for her 96-year-old mother, who was ill and needed a stimulant. The magistrate said that the exceptional circumstances induced him to impose a nominal penalty, but he warned Cameron not to do the same thing again, because if she were convicted a second time it might result in her imprisonment. "If a person is sick and really needs liquor as a medicine there is a way of getting it through a physician," he said. A charge against Margaret Conlin (licensee of the hotel) of having unlawfully sold liquor on that occasion was withdrawn.'
The News, Tuesday 1 September 1931, p10

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