VICTIM OR SINNER?

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVII, Issue 4992, 25 June 1926, Page 1

VICTIM OR SINNER?

IDLE AND DISORDERLY PERSON.

A SOCIOLOGICAL PROBLEM.

It was one of those cases so difficult to deal with ; one of those problems which are puzzling deep-think-ing sociologists. The man was a product of pur civilisation. Was he victim or sinner ? Was there a, nitch in our building of life to quite fit him ? Just an ordinary man, indistinguishable in the multitude, of middle tl g C —48 years he admitted —homeless, a wanderer o’er the face of the land, with no hope in the future to look to; Charles Franks stood in the prisoner's dock at the Morrinsville Police Court on Saturday to answer the charge of being an idle and disorderly person. There, were previous convictions against him in Auckland a,nd Hamilton. But a.lways the same: “idle,” yes ; “disorderly,”—outside the application of the law—no. It was the story of a waif, a weakling, a wanderer.

There was pathos in the tale he told. He came from England some six years ago—Hea.vqn knows what he did in his home land —but in this Dominion his occupation as he defined it was hotel porter, “cleanin’ up around the show,” he said. Probably hotel “rouseabout” would succinctly describe his vocation in life. The.n he lost his job, and sitting on a doorstep in Qu&en Street at night first brought him under the notice of the police. He was warned that time. But some two ye.ars later, apparently during that time he was earning a living, sleeping in Albert Park caused him to receive a sentence of two months’ imprisonment. Released, he; went to Hamilton, and then again “sleeping in the park” earned him another two.inonths. Released in May, he sought the country. He walked to Arapuni, where he worked for two days “fillin’ buckets up to yer knees in water ; I ’ad no blankets and I slept in a whare in me wet clothes. Then I chucked it in; I couldn’t Stand it.” Once again homeless, without employment, he sought the open road. He trudged towards Taupo, and somewhere he- go.t two days’ more work. “Why did you lea,ve ?” Almost pathetically came, the reply: “They told me to get out; I wasn’t any good.” Once more the long, long trail—“La Longue Traverse” almost —and he found his way to Morrinsville. He slept in the open, as he said, “one night on a plain where there was not a tree or a, hedge, apd it froze, and 1 shivered like that,” holding up Iris hands and shaking them. In Moirinsville he took up his night quarters in a shed; passed the day time on the side of the road in Bank Street, and performed his ablutions at the. railway station. And again the ha,nd of the law fell on him, and on the old charge he appeared before Messi’s G. Howie a.nd J. B. Thomas, J’s.P., at the Morrinsville Court. Listening to his story as he told it, there was pathos in his resentment and denunciation of the law and society, in his weak indignation, in the flicker of the manliness remaining against his position. “I’ve, never stolen and I don’t beg,” he said—and presumably truthfully. How he ha,d lived no one knows. It was a wail against the cruelty of F,ate. He, was a misfit; just a weakling; just a drifter. Unfitted for hard toil, he had gradually slipped back and back. In his wanderings there was nothing of a modern Ulysses. Nor could it be said:

“I’m only a strolling vagabond, I am bound for .the hills and the valleys beyond. . . . I follow Fortune as beckoned beyond.’’ Just je.tsa.ni and flotsam on the se.a of life. What to do with him was the puzzle. “We don’t think you are a rogue; no, you are not a rogue,’’ said the Bench, as they sentenced him to two months’ imprisonment. What else could they do ? Where else but to gaol could they send him ? And when he is released ? Then what ?—Star-