THE WIFE, THE BULLY AND THE WHITEBAIT

Hokitika Guardian, 3 September 1927, Page 1

THE WIFE, THE BULLY AND THE WHITEBAIT

“Auckland Star”. An intoxicated gentleman who threw a pot of boiling potatoes over his wife and burnt her nock was treated with remarkably tender consideration by a magistrate the other day. All the Bench did was to order him to come up foi sentence any time within twelve mouths and to stop his beer. Some magistrates hare had a different way with cowardi'y bullies and wife heaters There is a legend of one athletic and downright S.M. that Auckland knew in other days, who, when on the Thames goldfields, adjourned tho Court for

a quarter of an hour while lie gave an impudent customer of that sort the kind of punishment the ofi'enee deserved—a good hammering with his fists. Sometimes tho bully got it worse than that where there was no foolishly forgiving wife to beg him oil'. Consider the case of one. Kotiora,, the tattooed brown tyrant of a lakeland village in other days. Kotoira lived at Nukumaru, on the shore of Rotoeliu. 1 1 is wife, Aoniwaho, lie had captured by force of arms from her tribe at Rotoiti. One morning she was cooking him a meal' of whitebait from the lake. Kotoira was hungry and impatient and he shouted to his wife to bring him his breakfast. She replied that it was not yet thoroughly cooked. "Bring it to me now!” lie hollowed. She brought it in a wooden how?; Kotoira snatched it from her and grabbed up a handful of the “inanga.” The next moment, with a howl of anger, ho jumped up and threw the steaming mess over the woman’s head. "Go and cook some more,” he yelled, "and cook it properly !”

Some pakeh'u wives, cowed by a, long course of evil-tempered husbands, would have taken that treatment without complaint. Not so Aoniwaho. Ufa night, when the tryant of the whore slept, she stole out of the village and returned on foot and by canoe t.o her old Rotoiti homo, where she told the- tale of Kotoira’s atrocious insult. Her la tiler’s tribe was roused to fury, and by the next night a war party of vengeance was on its way. Nukumaru was siu-oumled and stormed at the first light ol dawn, and the bnify was capture and haled to Rotoiti to answer for his misdeeds. As he lay hound in the midst of the assembled tribe the orators told him what they thought of him. He was not ordered to come tip tor sentence at some indefinite time in the future. Not much. He was knocked on the head, cut up, cooked and eaten.

It is not suggested that the Auckland magistrate should have done all that to tho man who was so needlessly handy with a pot of potatoes. It is mentioned as an illustration of the fact that the worm has been known to turn, that tho last straw has goaded the camel into kicking off its packs. For the consideration of the Bench it is also pointed out that an effetive punishment for household would ho a taste of their own medicine. The brute who knocked a woman about could he handed over for special treatment by some eminent local pugilist, who would he paid according to results. —TANGIWAI.