LADIES IN COURT.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1377, 22 October 1886, Page 2

LADIES IN COURT.

In connection with the notorious HallHouston ca e there has lately arisen a feature which deservis reference at the hands of every writer m a public j >arnal. We lean from the sensational, exaggerated, and penny-a-lining accounts of ihe Lyttelton Times and other journals that the court ia every day crowded with ladies (?) If this be the case, it d< ea not say much for the good taste of Christchurch eociety. Christchurch always poses as an exceptionally “ hightoned ” town. As its admire s say it’s English you know, quite English.” It may be English in its normal state, but it is hardly the custom with English “ ladies ” to crowd a court when two human beings are being tried for their life, and when the must repulsive anatomicil and chemical details are being dwelt upon In France and America there exists a morbid love of the horrible amongst the weaker sex, which frequently exhibits itself In the moat grotesque incident, as witness the sending of bouquets to Maxwell, the St. Louis murderer, and the many expressions of sympathy which French mondaines evince in favor of a fr ihionable breaker of the Commandmei t«. But surely here In New Zealand our wives, sisters and daughters have something better to d 0 than to gloat over the horrors of a case like the HaliHouaton affair. Lady Stout was, we see, present the other day. She it is true, has an excuse for her presence in the fact that her husband was engaged on the case, but it would have been in better taste had even she remained away.— Wanganui Chronicle.