INDIGNANT TRUSTEES.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 583, 11 August 1909, Page 8

INDIGNANT TRUSTEES.

A LETTER AND A DISCUSSION, Rather indignant were the Trustees of the Benevolent''lnstitution yesterday afternoon, when a letter from Mr. Robert Darroch, headmaster at Mitcholltown School, was road at the weekly meeting of tlib board. The letter was as follows :— ' "A case deserving of your most charitable consideration has just come under my notice, Mrs. •' , with 6or 7 children, -— Street. ' I am told that you hold £37 in trust for her, and so far you :' have only advanced £1. I should imagine that there has been .some mis- ■ understanding, that the secretary, has' forgotten her-and her little, children. I" was able to invoke the sympathy of that . very excellent society which works privately for such cases (Mrs. Glasson is, I think, the president), otherwise they would still be in extremis." Attached was a copy of a circular note addressed by Mr. Darroch to the Revs. J. K. Elliott, Father O'Shea, A. M. Johnson, and Dr. Gibb:- / "A case deserving the charitable con- , .sideration. of any person or society liaS recently .come under my notice, and I feel that you, as a Minister of God, would like to know about it. Mrs. , with 6 or 7 children is widowed and destitute and in poor health at Street." The board's secretary recited the facts of the. case. It had been decided to. grant relief—clothes, rations,, coal, etc.. —and to hold the money in trust, investing'* it at' Post Office interest rates for the benefit of the widow and her: children. . . The Rev. \V. A. Evans regretted that fuller inquiry had not been made by the writer before taking'the action lie did. That sort of thing laid the trustees open to public critic-' ism. Strictly speaking, tho. board had stretched its powers a' little in order to do tho best for tho family. Under tho Act, relief should not bo granted to applicants who possessed such capital, as in the' case under discussion. "But tk>y had'decided to grant, relief, and hold the money in trust. He hoped that the board would bo put right in this matter..