The Feilding Star. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1887. Grass Widows

Feilding Star, Volume VIII, Issue 90, 5 February 1887, Page 2

The Feilding Star. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1887. Grass Widows

The Destitute Persons Act, 1877, provides that any husband who unlawfully deserts his wife and children, or neglect to provide them with adequate means of support, may be directed by any Resident Magistrate to pay, weekly or monthly, certain sums for their maintenance, with the addition in default of payment of committing the defendant to any gaol for any period not exceeding six months with or without hard labor. The Amended Act of 1884 provides : " When any husband unlawfully deserts his wife, or leaves her or her children, or fails to provide her or them with adequate meaus of support, and goes beyond the colony of New Zealand either temporarily or permanently, such husband shall be deemed to be guilty of a misdeinean- | our, punishable by imprisonment with hard labor for a term of twelve months." Notwithstading the stringency of these enactments the crime of wife .desertion in the Borough of Feilding there have been, and are now, some very heartless cases, attended with a brutal indifference which deserve the severest penalty the law can inflict. In one instance a wife i with a number of young children is left destitute by the husbandjaud father who, when in full work, speutevery shilling of his earnings in drink, and on being almost literally kicked out of his business, fled to another part of the colony, where he is now enjoying himself on the fat of the land while hiß struggling wife is put to sore straits to find the bare necessaries of life for her children and herself. Another case is that of Mrs Gold, who is in the receipt of relief from the Borough Council at the expense of the ratepayers, and of Mis R. Belfit who has been assisted for some time, during a period when she was in ill health. In eacli of these cases the husbands ought to have been brought back and made to maintain their families by the labor of their hands, instead of foisting them on the public. The whole secrect of the I matter is a feeling of sickly sentimentality which has stood in the way of proceedings being taken against the defaulting husbands. In fact, it is well known that one man would have been brought back long ago, only it was a certainty he would have received twelve months imprisonment, and certain extenuating circumstances in his case made it undesirable or unnecessary for him to be so punished. In order to discourage others who may be inclined to follow the bad example given them, we would suggest that in all future cases, brought under the notice of the Borough Council, not a penny be granted towards the relief of deserted families unless proper steps have been instituted to bring back the cowardly scoundrels to justice. So long as wives are fed and their children cared for, few women will care to have brought back to. them brutal drunken husbands. The only course is for the police to act without the feelings or convenience of the deserted ones being considered in the slightest. Otherwise the good nature of our City Fathers will be taken advantage of until the Borough finances are exhausted in alms-giving.