SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1900. CRUELTY TO CHILDREN. Burlesque of Justice at Christchurch.

Free Lance, Volume I, Issue 21, 24 November 1900, Page 6

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1900. CRUELTY TO CHILDREN. Burlesque of Justice at Christchurch.

TWO conclusions are strongly impressed upon the mind of the reader by the telegraphed account of the abortive prosecution of Lillie Long at Christchurch for cruelty to her two step-children. The first is that this practice of torturing children of tender years is becoming a very common one in New Zealand, and ought to be sternly suppressed. The other is that it is useless to bring such cases before justices of the peace and expect that exemplary punishment will be inflicted upon the offender as a warning and deterrent. Such charges should be dealt with only by stipendiary magistrates. * # • The cruelty in this Long case appears to have been of exceptional atrocity, and almost wholly without justification. So far as the woman's defence went, the elder of the two boys had told stories, and had once said •• shan't " to some order. These are faults to which boys of twelve years are prone and for which they are very properly punished. But not in the way that this Long woman punished her two wretched step-children. The two boys, twelve and nine years of age, appeared in court, and the eldest stripped and showed his back and arms, which were covered with weals and bruises. * • # The story of the elder boy was that he had been given some order by his step-mother, which he did not hear, and as he could not repeat it, she took off his coat and thrashed him with the buckle end of a heavy strap. Then he

was sent out to weed the garden, but " could not stand it any longer," and ran away with his little brother. It is a pitiful story. Babies almost in years, but brotherly in their sympathy, they stole away hand-in -hand together to find refuge anywhere in the world from the cruelty of the woman who had taken the place of their dead mother. Other testimony was given, and Dr Symes said that such a beating as had been inflicted upon the elder boy would have a very bad effect physically. • • * But mark the procedure of the bench of three jaypees. Did they punish the woman as she deserved ? Not they. If a driver had been before them for beating a horse with the butt end of a whip, or working him with a sore shoulder, they would have been severe in their displeasure and exemplary in their fine. If it had been a charge of torturing a sheep, or keeping fowls without water, the fine would have been substantial. But the offence was nothing so serious as that. It was only a case of a step-mother beating a dead woman's boys with the buckle end of a strap, and practically driving the little fellows bruised and bleeding from her home, to seek shelter and kindness at the hands of strangers. So the jaypees consulted together and warned the boys to behave better, and extracted a promise from the woman to try and make them good, and dismissed t)u case. • • • Oh, the irony of it ! Were they to be made good by the buckle end of the strap in the hands of a woman of ungovernable temper ? Was it the law that this or any other woman in the country was free to thrash a small boy with the buckle end of a leather strap and cover his sensitive body with weals and bruises ? Why, the callous decision of the Court was enough to cause the dead mother to turn in her grave, and was calculated to arouse a tumult of wrath in the bosoms of the motherhood of New Zealand. • • * But to continue our story. The boys were so obviously terrified at the idea of going back home, and clung so desperately to a policeman, that the Bench, after much discussion, gave the children into the care of the police to be brought before a Stipendiary Magistrate as neglected children. But it transpired subsequently that the police had no power to do this. There was no conviction against the stepmother, and nothing to show that she was unfit to have control of the boys, so that there was no alternative but to send them back to her, though the police — more humane than the jaypees — were very loth to do so. • • • The case illustrates very graphically the necessity for making the laws against cruelty to children more severe and effective, and of providing against the farce of sending such offenders before jaypees. Recently, we told the story of a man at Coromandel, who plunged a small boy into a tub of cold water on a winter's night, and then flogged him with a supplejack, and who was let off by the justices with a fine of £2. Then we had the case of a little girl at Ekatahuna who was so badly flogged with a riding whip that there were forty weals on her body, and whose tormentors were also fined £2. Now Aye have this case at Christchurch, where a woman thrashes a small boy with the buckle of a strap, and she is told by the jaypees to go on trying to make him good. Surely these outrages are a disgrace to our humanity ? Surely the laws against cruelty to children are weak and ineffective ? • * * [Since this article was written, a telegram from Christchurch says that the case against Lilian Long has been reheard, and that she has been sentenced to fourteen, days in gaol. It is little enough. Serves her very well right.]