RECORD-BREAKING FREAKS. Police Interference Wanted.

Free Lance, Volume IV, Issue 189, 13 February 1904, Page 6

RECORD-BREAKING FREAKS. Police Interference Wanted.

LAST week at Wanganui Felix Tanner completed a threeweeks' fast, and he is now at large. If Felix Tanner had kept any other person than himself without food for twenty-one days, he would possibly wind up in gaol. A man's life is the most precious thing given to him, and he breaks the law of nature by a stupid exhibition of ability to do something that hurts himself and nanders only to the morbid curiosity of other people.

We rightly wax indignant when grown-up people starve children, and we shudder at the possible consequences to the race if that sort of thing were tolerated. The State looks after other kinds of eccentrics who wander at large. A man, was sent to a lunatic asylum the other day because he imagined his head was connected by telephone with some distant place. The eccentricities of Tanner and Succi, and other people who fast, in order to draw crowds at so much a head to see them, is equally deserving of attention by the authorities. * * Some time ago Tanner, not being a boat builder or a sailor, was allowed to go to sea in a cockle-shell craft, which he called "The Ark." He has been fasting in order that he may build another cockle-shell craft to commence another sensational voyage. It is alleged that Tanner also used to suspend himself by the neck m public to demonstrate something or other, and make money. In fact, Mr. Tanner has been permitted to take risks with himself to a remarkable extent. Whether he has that craving for notoriety so hard to assuage, we don't know, but we do know that he ought to be prevented from attempting feats that are entirely ridiculous, and may have veryharmful effects. * * # We are an imitative people, and persons of morbid tendencies not only love these ghastly exhibitions, but frequently love to copy them. A particularly horrible suicide will frequently egg on highly sensitive or morbid people to imitation, and we are so proud of our reputation for an ability to break ridiculous and useless "records" that mentally deficient men or women will always 1 be found ready to lay down their lives for notoriety and cash. Mr. Tanner's life is his own. Possibly he doesn't value it, and even a majority of people in New Zealand might not weep if he fasted permanently. It would be distressing, but the people would get over it. * * ■» He sets a bad example, however. A boy shows his friends how Mr. Smith shot the sparrows, and shoots a mate dead. The boy admired Mr. Smith and imitated him. Another boy reads how "Gory George, the Goss-eyed Greaser" killed "All Fire Ike, the Broncho Buster." He goes out and shoots a harmless old fisherman asleep in his bunk. Another boy has read how "Nosey Bob," the hangman, gave a wife poisoner a ten-foot drop, and hies him away, introduces the subject and the rope to a friend, and has a fatal hanging exhibition. * * * All these instances of the application of the imitative faculty are real ones, and plenty of imitators of the freaks of Felix Tanner may be found. Unquestionably, this wilful juggling with life should be put down sternly. It ought to be made impossible for Felix Tanner to set further examples of hare-brained feats as copies for people so constituted as to see something worthy of imitation in such absurdities. It isn't m the least necessary in the interest of science for persons to go without food, or hang themselves, or go to sea ,in unseaworthy craft. There are homes for the mentally afflicted in New Zealand.