TAUNTED ABOUT PAST

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 3828, 7 August 1928, Page 1

TAUNTED ABOUT PAST

WIDOW AND PHARISEE. Because of a slip in the past, a widow in England alleged that she had to put up with persecution from neighbours. The woman told Judge , Cluer at Shoreditch, that seven years ago she was sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment for receiving stolen goods. Four days after her conviction her husband committed suicide, leaving her with a son. She sent the hoy to a school for two years anti tried to keep her offence from him, but he learned it from the neighbours’ remarks. The widow added that the woman who lived in the adjoining house, which she herself owned, persistently called after her “Gaol bird!” and “Thief!” and had stopped her son, who was now 18, and a clerk in the city, and threatened to tell him about his mother’s past. The woman, the widow alleged, had led her a dog’s life, and she asked for possession of the house so that she could get rid of her persecutor and her husband. Defendant’s wife denied that she made the remarks alleged, but admitted she had once told the woman to drown herself. Judge Cluer, iu making (lie order, remarked that the widow had ser-, veil her penalty for a serious crime, but if a person had once committed a crime people never forgot it. The Pharisee in this ease had even threatened to tell the son’s employers, who probably had confidence in him, that his mother had committed a crime. 'Such a person was not fit to be a neighbour to anyone.