GRAVE ALLEGATIONS.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 867, 13 July 1910, Page 6

GRAVE ALLEGATIONS.

■WANGANUI RIVER MAORIS. (By Telegraph—Special Correspondent.) Wanganul, July 12. In reference to the case of a Maori woman, who was abandoned by Natives at Pipiriki, as reported a few days ago, a "iLerald" correspondent writes tonight: "This poor unfortunate woman, was taken from Pipiriki suffering with, a loathsome disease to Hiruharama to be treated. Hearing of the treatment she received I think it is only right that the treatment should be made the subject of inquiry as, eventually, she died. Can you inform me where or when, not very long since, a certain dead child was taken in a launch from the foreshore up the river to be buried? The police know the mother and the white man. These things should not be tolerated in a Christian country. What are Dr. Pomare and his staff doing?" The latter statement in the letter refers to the Native practice of taking the bodies of those who die at their camps in town up the river. These deaths are seldom or never registered, and it is but rarely that there is any doctor in attendance to give a certificate of death. The reason appears to be that the Natives are not subject to tho same laws governing' these matters as operate in the case of Europeans. Such occurrences are so common here as to excite-little remark, though the local press has. frequently drawn, attention to them with no result.