From ODT Archives - 100 Years Ago

Joyriders blight Christchurch

Joy-riding with cars taken without authority from parking places in the city is a form of illicit pleasure that is on the increase (remarks the Christchurch Sun). The police are receiving many complaints from owners of cars, whose machines have been taken and subsequently found in some back street with very little petrol in the tank. A new phase of trouble is that even the locking of the car does not always ensure their being left when owners return.

Editor: what has changed?

Bourbon ruse goes awry

The humours of prohibition in the Unites States have been illustrated by the widespread sympathy extended to one of the best known and richest of American newspaper proprietors, who recently arranged for the purchase of 200 gallons of the finest Bourbon whiskey. To facilitate getting his cargo home, he bought a brand-new petrol lorry bearing the emblem of the Standard Oil company. Into this was poured the precious fluid, which, in its brightly painted tank, arrived at the country estate of the purchaser shortly before midnight.

Owning to the late hour, he instructed the driver to back the lorry into his garage, which he locked, with the intention of having the whiskey put in casks and placed in his cellar the following day. Unfortunately, the newspaper owner failed to take account of the zeal of a young mechanic he had recently engaged. At 7 o’clock in the morning the mechanic entered the garage and seeing the Standard Oil lorry, piped the whole of its contents, to the value of £2000, in to his employer’s large underground petrol tank where it rendered valueless 60 gallons of expensive petrol. Editor;- now wouldn’t that cause a bit of emotional trauma!

SIMU discusses mirrors

At the meeting of the executive of the South Island Motor Union, held in Christchurch on Thursday evening last, at which Mr H Halliday represented Dunedin, several important matters were considered.

“I can give you an instance of the necessity for mirrors” said Mr Halliday. “I was driving behind a loaded motor wagon the other day. It was in the middle of the road when I sounded my horn, for the driver could not hear me, let alone see me. I drew alongside the waggon and as I was about to pass on my proper side, the wagon swung over to its left side, with the result that I was forced into the ditch, and broke a spring. If that waggon had been equipped with a mirror the driver would have known that I was behind”.