A RURAL TRAGEDY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 977, 8 April 1911, Page 4

A RURAL TRAGEDY.

THE PITIFUL STORY OF A N XIR WOOLMORE. Lamiioukxf:, March 12. At lipping Police Court on the coth in.st. Annie Woolmore, a young married woman with a family of live children, was sentenced to six weeks’ imprisonment in Kollo way Gaol for “ neglect." She was not accused of physical cruelty or drunkenness —the five children were well nourished and healthy—but the hniise was not clean and the children's clothing was 11 dirty and neglected." That is the crime lot which the woman is now in prison. A personal examination of the circumstances has revealed a very sad rural tragedy. The house, or wooden shanty, where the Wuolmores lived (for the home is now broken up and the children are mothered by the Slate at Ongar Workhouse), stands in a lonely lane, and has just beeu condemned as uninhabitable. The only wav of procuring a supply oi f:csh water was to carry it from a distmee of a quarter of a mile across t’ne fields. The income ol Uie lamily was sixteen shillings a w.-ck —the wage of the rural labourer —of which half-a-crown went in rent. On 13s 6d., therefore, husband, wife, and five children kept body and soul togethe .

SIX VF.AKS OF MAKKIIiU LIFE. Reaving the desert 1 bonwith its padlocked door, I song in out in turn those persons in the neighbourdood who could tell me anything about Annie Woolmore, Among" others, I talked with he sister, anu brother-in-law, in thei. clean, neat cottage at Lambourne. I questioned the husband's employer, a shrewd yeonioi farmer, who has known the family for years, and waylaid George Woolmore, the husbard, as he plodded his way Irom the felds at dusk. The story which I gleaned accords entirely with the newspaper reports ot the case, but it paints in some details which put the matter in another perspective. Here are the bald tacts. Annie Fox, who has been " in service," marries George Woolmure, some six years ago, and, while wages do not increase, the family keeps growing until fve children have beeu reared in the home. The children are well led a.id nourished —that is admitted at the trial —but for some lime past the wife has been "queer." She starved herself to feed the kids," says the husband, "and was not in her right mind." With that sioveliuess which is so olteu bred of poverty, illness and exhaustion, the woman does not keep the house clean, and does not carry water from the pool across the fields.

George Woolmore, like a majority' ol Ins class, leaves everything in the way of housework to the wife. She is ill, depressed, "mit upon,” and rarely leaves the hovel. Then, after one or two warnings, the sanitary authorities swoop down upon the hut, and finding it in a foul and loathsome condition, serve summonses on husband and wife. FOR WHAT -MIGHT UAI’fEN. The sequel we know. What defence can these wretched people make before a bench cf magistrates ? To lie delicate, to be the mother ot five children, to have no water near, and to Iced seven people on thirteen shillings, is no answer to a charge of keeping a filthy house. "The condition under which the children were living would have a serious effect upon them if they fell ill.” So runs the doctor’s evidence. For what might happen the woman is condemned to six weeks’ imprisonment, and "was removed crying, ‘ Don’t lake me 1 and ‘ Oh, Lord, save me.’ " The mother goes to Holloway for six weeks, the children are carried to Ongar Workhouse, and the husband, with wife and children taken from him, sleeps at night in his master’s barn, like some stray dog that has lost its way home. Justice has singled out Annie Woolmore to answer for all this chain of circumstances, and sire must go to Holloway to learn cleanliness, whether she be delicate or healthy.

The people of Lambourue have discussed the case among themselves until they' are tired. Already a rumour, false, it is true, but sympathetic of the whole case, has spread that the prisoner has died in Holloway', and that the children orphaned in iact, are now orphaned in name as well. The sentimental may he inclined to suggest that a little kindness, a little medical aid, and perhaps a few weeks in a hospital might have been the proper treatment for Annie Woolmore, but the Bench thought otherwise, arid while the five sturdy children are in the workhouse and the husband and father sleeps on his bag of straw in the barn, the mother rests on a plank bed in the gaol, to which an outraged Bench has consigned her,