MOTAH AND THE MAIDS
How Gushing Girls are Led a Giddy Glide.
A Wild Night in an Empty House.
(From "Truth's" Dunedin Rep.) The Turks do well to fit — at least sometimes —
The women up, because, in sad reality;
Their chastity in these unhappy climes
Is not a thing of that astringent quality,
Which in the North prevents precocious crimes,
And makes the snow, less pure than our morality.
The sun, which, yearly melts the Polar ice,
Has quite the contrary effect on vice
If good old Byron had lived in Dunedin for a season, and saw a casual snow fall, he would arrive at the conclusion that instead of reckonings the morality of the dour toun on a level with snow, it would be wiser to substitute a fall of rain that had passed through a soot laden atmosphere. The morality of clerical ridden Dunedin resembles at times, to use the poet's license that meteorological phenomenon known in other countries as black rain. Immorality is no phenomenon in the dour city, as the latest joy ride to date discloses. What a ripping verse Byron would have produced had
THE MOTAH AND THE JOY-RlDE been features of his day! In the poetic line, however, Dunedin has only a bloke named Thornton Stewart, who jingles anent jingoism and sees nothing in the motah.
Caversham is a curious but a very nice place, and happens to have a few empty houses. One of the latter is fully furnished and fenced with a fine orchard. The empty, furnished house, of course, has beds, couches and other accessories before the fact and also casement muslins and lace hangings. All this detail features on part of the programme, the other part being filled up by four motah blokes, and two very loose misses from Arthur street. It happened, in order to make both sides of the programme fit in that one who was concerned in a joy-ride before and pummelled in Court, drove the other three blokes and the "twin belles of the moor" to the empty furnished house, where, with beer, and fags, they all deposited themselves. How they got in is another story.
It happened that the ring-leader, as he will find out to his cost, had, when the house was occupied lawfully formerly, been a lodger there, and, of course, had a key. This he retained when the occupants left, and it proved the "open sesame" to many a wild night in the cosy cot. The deeds of debauchery and beer chewing that took place there on the final night when the male quartet and the female duo dislocated the concern, are better left uncovered. It was certainly
A DEVILISH WILD NIGHT in Caversham. When morning nearly arrived, the ladies polished themselves all over with the casement muslins, and the four motah-men wiped their dials and their boots on the lace curtains. They left a drunken candle burning on a dressing table, and it was a wonder the cosy cot was not burned to the ground.
Now, It Is quite time for these motor blokes to draw a rein. Their scandalous doings for the past 12 months would fill columns of this family journal. The two "ladys" concerned, from Arthur-street, are deplorable dames, but, like the major portion of fallen femininity their sins are not of their own making, and that's quite enough about them. The motor blokes, however, are of a different brand as they are becoming a veritable menace to many giddy but innocent girls. To illustrate their method of trading on innocence: — They use the motor as their chief bait. A free jaunt in the car is offered to any aimless and foolish female, who has nothing to do but haunt the streets. The gullible maid, always eager for the motor ride, gets another girl and, on the quiet, the motor man and the trafficker. The joy-ride is initiated, and as they succeed in plugging the silly girls with port wine or beer, the same ladies return to town minus their decency. It is the first shove on the short road to ruin, and is a nightly occurrence in Dunedin. It, however, as often happily happens, the girls won't look at the beer or port wine, the decent motor men or their masters for the time being, make the trip an extra long one, as happened in connection with Saddle Hill some time ago. If the girls then don't
SUCCUMB TO THE BANEFUL DESIRES of the blokes, they are put out of the car and left in a lonely district in the darkness and rain to find their way back to town as best they can. Two of the gents are very old offenders at the game and very successful ones, too.
There are several decent motor drivers in Dunedin, but the four blokes under discussion, one of whom is a married man, would shame a mob of Chinese criminals.
However, nuff said presently; there may be much more anon. -NZ Truth, 25/11/1914.
"A bloke named Thornton Stewart" - who was he?
Newspaper references to a J Thornton Stewart connect him with the entertainment business - in fact, in the vanguard of the new entertainment technology of the time, the bioscope, now known as the moving picture.
It can be reasonably assumed that he of the bioscope and he of the "motah" are one and the same due to "Truth's" reference to the "jingling" of "jingoism." It local Dunedin papers in 1914 were published patriotic poems by Mr J Thornton Stewart. He was also a member of and contributor to the Dunedin Gaelic Society.
"Truth's" description of goings-on in a Caversham house and sinful joy rides reads like a challenge. Stewart had two options in light of "Truth's" revelations: he could ignore it as beneath his notice or he could prosecute the newspaper for libel and brave the reportage from the witness box. He chose the former.
J Thornton Stewart ceases to be reported in local newspapers in 1916 - after a civil suit to recover a moderate sum of money. Poetical effusions from a Mr J T Stewart from Wellington began to appear shortly after. In 1920 he seems to be back in Dunedin and writing to newspapers on a number of subjects until the following year.
DEATH.
STEWART. — On April 21st, 1930, at Dunedin, John Thornton Stewart, late of Glasgow, Scotland; aged 74 years. — Hugh Gourley, Ltd., undertakers. -Evening Star, 24/4/1930.
Stewart's death has a small mystery to it. Dunedin's cemetery records include a John Thornton Stewart and the date is correct. They also state that he died in the Seacliff mental asylum. It was, it seems, a common practice to avoid the stigma of being an asylum patient by reporting the death as occurring in Dunedin and, often, the funeral procession would begin at the family home with no mention of place of death.
As to his reason for being at Seacliff, it is tempting to wonder if past indiscretions, or even a double life, caught up with him in some way.
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