LEADING THE SIMPLE LIFE

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2405, 10 March 1915, Page 7

LEADING THE SIMPLE LIFE

LOAFERS' AJBOAD;Y DISTURBED.

A happy little home of vagrants has been heartlessly broken up by the local police.. Sergeant Wade and CMstables Chapman and Edwards were informed that if-they paid a'visit toia vacant railway section near Thorndon Quay early, some morning '• they would find something very interesting. They set cut-at aoout 2.30 o'clock yesterday morning, and discovered a vagrants' boardinghouse right an the centre of a field overgrown to a height of seven or eight feet with fennel, and to which access could be gained by a well-worn path, they discovered four disreputablyclad men sleeping soundly. They were not huddled together,' hut each s'ept in a small compartment' lined comfortably withrags, and sheltered, as far as possible from the vulgar gaze of the public. A corridor, as in an .hotel, led past each "room," while a larger apartment gave evidence of it being a living room.. The "boarders" were rudely awakened by the visitors, and marched along to the police, station. A. subsequent search by the police showed that the happy little home had been in existence for some time past, and that there were indications ■ that the quartet who were living the simple life had helped themselves to ajjparel from neighbours' clothes-lines, while ,the fact that milkjugs and their consents and loaves of bread had disappeared from yard-safes was very suspicious. • At the police station the quartet, who had been joined ;by ■ another vagrant, who had been arrested, from a section near by, made a strange collection. Their net capital (did not total one shilling. Yesterday they. appeared before Mr. D. 6. A. Cooper, S.M., and under the names of George Carr, John Brodrick, Thomas • Bush, William Plymouth Brown, and Christian Olsen, were each 'sentenced to a mbnth's imprisonment.