From the Tewkesbury Register of May 28th 1892.
The following extract from The Daily Mail of the 24th inst., may prove of interest ( in different ways ) to many of our readers---especially in view of the report which the police were recently directed by the Borough Bench of Justice to make to them upon the occasion of the general annual licensing meeting in August next.
A correspondent wrote to the Right Hon. James Lowther, M.P. for Thanet, enclosing a copy of a document stated to have been issued by the Chief Constable of Kent to the license-holders in that county. The document requested the owners of licensed premises not to serve children under the age of thirteen with alcoholic liquor, nor to offer them toys and sweets as an inducement to revisit the house.
Mr. Lowther in reply, says:--“ The supposed police notice enclosed in your letter of May 19th must surely be a hoax, as the issue of any such document would clearly be a gross act of impertinence, as well as an unwarrantable usurpation of legislative functions upon the part of an executive authority whose duty is solely to carry out and not to manufacture the law of the land.”
“It would, in my opinion, constitute an intolerabe injustice to the poorer classes if hardworked parents with children unemployed, were to be compelled by law to go in person to a public-house to fetch their dinner beer.”