Weighty fine for light weight

“A very ancient offence,” remarked Mr J. W. Poynton SM, when a baker came before him at Auckland last week and admitted that he had sold a 2lb loaf of bread which was short

weight. The circumstances stated were that one loaf sold to an inspector was an ounce below the right weight and six others which were weighed were also found to be under weight slightly. The magistrate remarked, in reply to defendant’s statement that he had trouble with the firing of the oven, that he knew bakers had difficulty in regulating the weight of bread, but it had always been so. The laws of Hammurabai, in ancient Babylon, laid it down that the milkman who watered milk be drowned in the pool from which he drew the water, and that the baker who gave light weight should be baked in the oven in which the light bread was baked. The law was not now quite so extensive, but still it had to be made effective. Defendant would be fined £10 and 9s costs.