DESTITUTION.

NZ Truth, Issue 74, 17 November 1906, Page 4

DESTITUTION.

THE STATE STEP-MOTHe'&.

Third Wife Hampered With Too . . ' N ■ Many Families.

An Extraordinary fixture of * Broods.

It sounds awfully pleasant and puffs out' paterfamilias with becoming pride to hear or read what Sir John Gorst lias to, say about the sturdy specimens of young New Zealand that have, attracted his attention since he landed back here, a few weeks : ago, ■after many years of absence. Of the sturdiness and strength of lungr. of oUi- jiivehile 'populatitfny so far as" Wellington is concerned there is not the slightest doubt. As children are a country's, best asset. New Zealand's progress m years to come ought to be assured ; but' what at present concerns 1 this paper is the great number of children, who, day after day, are brought before Dr. Me Arthur, S.M., charged with being either neglected waif.'i, the children of parents who are so poverty-sticken that they cannot afford their maintenance and accordingly cast the burden of parental responsibility upon the State. The number of children committed to Receiving Homes, whose parents are m indigent circumstances, is certainly positive proof of the great poverty that exists m Wellington, and it is somewhat strange that so. much pauperism should exist m prosperous New Zealand—"God's 6wn Country," as she is blasphemously called— and the " Working Man's Paradise," where there are, So many unemployed. It is a fact that many parents, shirking the duly they owe to their offspring, throw them on the State and expect the State to uprear their brood without their being called upon to contribute to their maintenance. Several cases of this nature came to light at the S.M.s Court last Monday. True, it was the mothers that were brought to the bar, arid what was the more sad, the fathers and husbands were

CRUEL, COWARDLY DESERTERS

Nevertheless, it was to the mothers, the fathers not being handy, that the police looked for a contribution for the support of their offspring at present m Receiving Homes.' In one case a woman stated that she occasionally earned 3 -5s to 17s Gd per week m a laundry, and out of that she had to maintain herself. Dr. 4 MoArthuf, m making an order of 5s per week against her, advised the woman, who Was voting and looked sttohg and healthy, to obtain a situation m domestic service, where she could easily earn as much as 15s per week with her keep thrown m.

The next woman, also young and strong, was the niother of two boys thrown on the State. She, too, had been deserted and could not offer anything for the maintenance of her boys. She was questioned as to her means of livelihood and she stated that she was a housekeeper, earning Us a week. She kept house for a man, who lived apart from his wife, and there was no one else m the house she kept than the gentleman and herself. This description of livelihood didn't appeal to the Bench, who ordered her to pay 5s a week for the support of each boy, and at- the same time suggested that if she was not getting mote than Us per week from the gent she kept house for, she should apply to him for a rise.

What, m addition to being a genuine case of poverty, was a curiously mixed up family, was that of two boys, aged 7 and 10 years, who were brought before Dr. Me Arthur at the S.M.s Court on Tuesday morning. The mother, as no doubt she is by law, of the boys gave an account of the rather

COMPLICATED MATRIMONIAL VENTURES of her husband, who died a couple of months ago, and the strange genealo-

gical tree of her family. The widow was the third wife. By his first wife he had two children. On her demise he took unto his bosom another wite. who was then a widow. She brought With her two children, and one "of them, a boy, called Tom, now 10 years, was the subject of the. "charge." Tom himself made the affair all the more complicated by telling the beak that he had a brother and sister who are inmates of an Industrial School. By the second marriage came Arthur, now aged seven, among others, and Arthur was the second chap that the Magistrate was called unon to dispose of. Wife No. 2 duly died, and wife No. 3, the present Widow, came on the scene with four of her own. She had been married a number of years, and had produced a second brood to the third-hand husband, whom she had the luck to survive.

It took Dr. McArthur all his time to £et, a grip of things, and nobody thought it worth while to enquire what the numerical strength of the strange family was at present. The widow seemed a decent kind of woman and she explained that she was having; a hard row to hoe, but what with her own efforts at music-teaching and other WQrk, and with the assistance of her step-daughters— first or second degree not stated— who would stay at home and look after the house and care for another step-sister, who was an invalid, she reckoned she would pull through. Gtood luck to her, anyway it ftoes. Anyhow, the two boys, two bright, smiling, intelligent little urchins, did not seem to care a straw which way the wind blew, and gleefullxr marched off with a constable to start life as State children.