KEPT IN AT NIGHT

Hokitika Guardian, 24 September 1932, Page 6

KEPT IN AT NIGHT

CAUSE OF GIRL’S SUICIDE, WHY HER PARENTS INSISTED. SYDNEY, September 16. A short time since, a girl of fifteen, Ellen Soott, living in a Melbourne suburb, hanged herself because her parents had told her that she must not stay out after 7.30 p.m. At the i)n.qutestt, ■gijvj friend stated that Nellie had said that she could not bear this interference with her liberty, and that she felt , like throwing herself into trie river, “as there does not seem to be anything worth living for.”

This tragedy excited much interest and curiosity, and even in Sydney a discussion was raided as to Whether such restrictions on 'a girl’s freedom were tolerable or justifiable. But it then transpired that the girl’s determination to have her own way had caused her parents great distress, and that, having come home the night (or morning) before at 3.15 a.m., she had positively refused to tell them where she had been, or what she had been doing. 1 This' seems to put a wry', different complexion on the story, and the good people in Sydney and! Melbourne who have been pretesting against “restrictions on the liberty of children” mav well be asked if they consider that the parents would be consulting the highest interests of a child of'fifteen by .allowing her to stay out nracticnllv all night, without knowledge Where, or with whom, or in what wav she snent her time. The world is almost' deafened to-day with the demand* of tlu»' venturer generation for more freedom.” But surely in a ease like this, whore parents have to fare resnonsibilitv for the'folly of their children anil its consequences, 1 they ckriarve e’oioe 'consideration,' too.