HABITUAL DRUNKARDS.

Evening Star, Issue 3690, 19 December 1874, Page 1 (Supplement)

HABITUAL DRUNKARDS.

To the Editor. TR > —The case of the unfortunate woman committed in the llesideut Magistrate’s Court yesterday for three months, with hard labor, as a habitual drunkard, calls loudly for some reform in this arbitrary treatment of confirmed inebri .tea. The common gaol is not a fit asylum for such people. Jn cases oc this hind, where drunkenness has become a disease, no good can be effected by the association of piostitutes and women of abandoned character. Those who suffer from their insatiate craving for drink are more to be pitied than blamed, for both physically and mentally they carry their own punishment in body and mind ; and where their moral nature struggles hard to conquer this damnable vice, ineffectual thougn it may be, the law, as at present administered, places reformation beyond their reach, and by committing them to gaol irrecoverably shuts out all chance of redemption by giving the coup ue yrace to their misery, viz , the loss ot self-respect, for— Deputation—that away, Men are but paiuted loam or gilded clay. The subject is one requiring an abler pen than mine, and i hope it will receive the attention of the philant ophic, through the agitation of the Press.—l am, &c. f Dunedin, December 18.