38 Ind. App. 625 | Ind. Ct. App. | 1906
In the court below appellant was charged by indictment, tried, convicted, and fined $10 for an alleged violation of §7283b Burns 1901, Acts 1895, p. 248, §2. His motion to quash the indictment was overruled, and this ruling is here assigned as error.
The gist of the charge, as presented by the indictment, is that appellant, a licensed liquor dealer, on October 10, 1905, in Elkhart county, then and there unlawfully permitted a certain device for music, to wit, a Eegina music box, to be and remain in the room in which he was then engaged in selling intoxicating liquors in less quantities than a quart at a time.
Appellant, in support of his motion to quash, insists that there is no statute in this State making it unlawful to permit a device for music to remain in a licensed saloon. That part of §7283b, supra, applicable to the question now before us, provides: “All persons holding license * * * authorizing the sale of spirituous, vinous, malt or other intoxicating liquors in less quantities than a quart at a time, shall provide for the sale of such, liquors in a room separate from any other business of any kind, and no devices for amusement or music of any kind or character, * * * shall be permitted in such room.”
Eeading this statute in the light of the history of conditions when enacted and the mischief to be remedied, we must conclude that the true purpose and intent of the legislature by such enactment was to prohibit in saloons not only devices for amusement, but music of every kind or character, whether produced by the voice or a musical invention. It was evidently the intention of the legislature to stop the alluring of people by means of amusements or music, into rooms where liquors are sold, thereby discoura
Judgment reversed, with a direction to sustain the motion to" quash.