A HORRIBLE TALE.

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2518, 4 May 1882, Page 2

A HORRIBLE TALE.

A terrible story comes to ns from Ohinemutu. Luckily, the first report has been considerably toned down by subsequent information. The original tale was much as follows:—A native woman gave birth to a child which was naturally believed by the father to be his. Another “ native gentleman,” however, put in a claim, and the dispute ended in each seizing the unfortunate infant by a leg, and literally doing that which Solomon once proposed should be done in a case where he gained considerable kudos for his astuteness. The divided remains of the poor child were then hastily buried, and every endeavor was made to hush up the crime. Latest intelligence, however, considerably modifies the horror of the affair, though leaving it bad enough. It appears that when tho child was born tho mother’s people were desirous of taking it away. The father objected, and a struggle ensued in which the child was so roughly handled that it finally died. But the strangest part of the story remains to be told. The remains were exhumed, & post mortem examination was held, and the jury returned a verdict of “ Death from natural causes.” If the facts of the case are correctly stated, it is impossible to conceive a mora singular verdict. The ideas of the jury on what may naturally happen to an infant are strange in the extreme, and do not say much for the security of infant life at Ohinemutu. It is apparently thought quite within the bounds of ordinary occurrences that a child should be so affectionately mauled by its loving relatives as to make it immediately desirous of quitting a world where the best it can expect is to be done to death by over-love. It might possibly argue, in its young intelligence, that, if affection was so rough, what would the consequence be if it chanced to anger its relatives. Tho whole story is a curious one, and affords a proof, if one were wanted, that truth is frequently stranger than fiction.