GIRL’S WRETCHED FATE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 415, 25 July 1908, Page 4

GIRL’S WRETCHED FATE.

Eighteen Months the Prisoner of a Lunatic.

A terrible story ot a daughter’s sufferings at the hands of an insane father, comes from Toronto. It appears that a market gardener named George White, who lives in a shingled hut some little way out of the city, became possessed by illusions, chief among which was the belief that an imaginary family, named Clark, to whom he ascribed supernatural powers, had sworn to kill him. He asserted that the “Clarks” had imparted the power of speech to his clock and his dog, and that his house and laud were infested with strange moving and talking beings. At length White became firmly imbued with the idea that his daughter Hilda was in league with the Clarks against him. Immediately there began for the unhappy girl a life of terrible torture, planned with maniacal brutality in punishment of her supposed complicity. In a tiny room opening off the kitchen of his hut White incarcerated his daughter, and for eighteen months he never unlocked the door lest she might get to his food supply and poison it. Often for days together he gave her practically nothing to oat, and as there was no bed in the room she had to sleep on a few articles of old clothing thrown to her by her demented gaoler, who scarcely ever even spoke to her except when he gave her certain tasks to do. White insisted that his “properly,” otherwise the plot of land on which his hut is situated, was covered with large stones, and at intervals he compelled the girl to go round with a heavy basket in order to clear the ground of these obstacles. At such limes she had to don the male attire on which she had slept, her own clothes having been taken away from her, and the door of her room being still locked, she had to both leave and enter by the one window. White once more sent his daughter on this task, but, eluding his vigilance, she slipped away and walked into the city, where her extraordinary appearance led to her arrest. The poor girl was in a pitiful state of exhaustion, following on starvation, and it is feared that her mind has become unhinged. She is now in the prison infirmary, and her father, who appears in no way concerned, is to be sent to an asylum.