A Veritable Chadband

Feilding Star, Volume VIII, Issue 102, 5 March 1887, Page 1 (Supplement)

A Veritable Chadband

Chadband came to judgment in the Westminister Police Court in the person of Edward Curtis Steele. Nothing more grotesquely sad has ever been reported than this story of a local preacher living on the mendicancy of a child of eleven, and beating him brutally when h& did not bring home enough money. The child is now. in an indus-trial school, but, before- he went there, he was found crawling about the streets at two in the morning. He dreaded going home to face an angry father without being able to report a suffiwientiybrisk sale of certain tracts on " Apostolical Christianity and Eternal Punisfonxent" entrusted to his care. When the tracts did not go of? well he was to say that he was selling them to support a- sick parent. The sick parent, however, used to tbrashhim within an inch of his life if he ventured to come back.empty handed. The father's defence was that it was all done for fear of spoiling the child and sparing the rod. But his rod was- a knotted rope,- while the blows- were 1 delivered on, a body that was half -starved. A neighbour, who described the unmerciful thrashings administered to this hardened little offender of eleven, broke down as she gave her evidence. The violence was due to no exceptional outburst of temper. The child was sometimes beaten as often as five times in one Week, and his Sabbaths were passed in the dark room, on a ration of bread and water. While the son was engaged in this way, the father was holding forth on what he was pleased to call religion in Hyde Park, and with such fervor as frequently to draw tears from his own eyes. In fact, he livnd on what he ; did not understand — religion ; and de- ! clined to live by what he did— his trade of a carpenter. No people will rejoice more than the truly religious that an imposter of this kind has been eiposed, and to them it naust be a source of satisfaction to know that Steele was sentenced to six months' hard labor, with the prospect of a new prosecution on his release. — ' Daily News.'