DIRT, DEATH AND DAMNATION.

NZ Truth, Issue 145, 28 March 1908, Page 5

DIRT, DEATH AND DAMNATION.

SICKENING SQUALOR OF A DUNEDIN

HOVEL

The Daughters and Their Illegitimate Brood.

THE REVELATIONS OF A RECENT INQUEST.

•Industrial School, Caversham, January 30, 19O8. ; . The Secretary for Education, Wellington. INFANT LIFE PROTECTION. Sir,— On the 30th instant I visited Mrs Garrick's home, 200a Kingstreet. Her eldest- daughter has •had an illegitimate child. The girl is working at the biscuit factory, and, the mother informed me, earns. ,£1 per week and pays her 10s per week towards the keep of the child. •My impression on .entering the house was that I would have been sorry for' my pigs to be brought up m such,- filth. The living-room .was filthy ; the smell beyond description. In a pram lay the baby, anything but clean, with rags for •clothing. It certainly had enough to eat — was partaking of < warm milk, and looked fairly well nourished. The two younger daughters of Mrs Garrick were m a filthy condition. The little one, 2£ years' old, was filthy enough to be scraped . with a knife. . Mrs Garrick was per-, haps worse. The two boys were committed some little time ago and trandf erred to Wareroa. The bedrooms were awful, one room having a 'bed with a filthy mattress, springs sticking out of the . tick, and no bedclothes. Another had a mattress with: a dirty' blanket, ori the bed— a heap of feathers m one corner of the room-rail that oit contained. Here are these peo- • pie allowed to have- these children to drag up anyhow ; with the result that one daughter has ]ust had an illegitimate child. There is another child— about twelve. What is to become of her with such an example ? Could not this man have some of his pay deducted, and compel him to allow someone to ■ look after his children, as lie has proved himself incapable? I have told Mrs G-arrick that as she is receiving pay from her daughter for looking after the child, she will have to be licensed. I cannot recommend a license under the present conditions. Child born November 21, 190?. (Signed) H. 'PBTREMANT, District Agent. This report was sent to the Education Department m Wellington on the 30th January last, by an accredited agent of one of the Industrial Schools established at ■ Caversham, Dunedin. On the face of it the report showed the case to which it referred was urgent; but the Education Department, with that delightful system of procrastination that has already made it notorious throughout the Dominion, calmly buried the document m one of its pigeon-holes and troubled its useless head no more about the matter. As 'the following particulars will show, the Department has practically made itself responsible for the death of two children, for one of the 'babies to which reference is to be made is dead, and the other, if it lives, will REMAIN A DEFORMED WRECK. Had the Department done its I duty, and treated the report with the despatch it is reasonable to expect, iboth children might have been saved. On November 24t»h last, m ft little Broomed house m a right-of-way of King-street, ,Dunedin, the 17-year-old daughter of George and Isabella Garrick was found to be on the poinrfe of becoming a mother and was at once removed to the ".Maternity .Hospital m Forth-street. A boy was. born there, and it remained m >the ; hospital for a fortnight; Then .mother and child were returned to King-street, and . shortly . afterwards the girl (Jane) returned to her work m a ■biscuit factory. , The baby was very delicate, and did not thrive. On the 9th March its 'state was ..suph that Dr. Roberts was called, m. The doctor found the infant lying, asleep m the one, living room, with his eyes half open and his mouth open. When he touched the child lie found it was covered with flies', and a number ,flew out of its mouth.y.Two young women (one t lie mother Of the child) and a young man were present, and the doctor told them, that;, the child was suffering from sickness and diarrhoea and prescribed a course of treatment. The squalor of the house at this time was something damnable, according to such information as is available. The baby and all the inmates were m a filthy condition, as were the rooms, which did not admit fresh air. The window of one of the bedrooms would open only about an inch. The other bedroom was a long, narrow, tunnel-like den, six feet high and six feet wide, with no window, and four persons slept there. When the outer door of the house w»as shut no air could possibly set m, except, perhaps, by a disused chimney on one side of the house. This chimney was covered m with iron, and at the other side of it was a water-closet. Nine persons m all in~ habited this three-room ed hovel—mother, father, three daughters, son-in-law, a little girl three years old, and two illegitimate babies. The eldest daughter save birth to one of the latter m October last, and has since married. The second daughter had been misconducting herself with a half-paralysed man, and 'as a result gave birth to a child the month following her sister's confinement. The youngest daughter was about fifteen years' old— a well-grown, ''bright-faced child. She was, however, fast following m her sisters' ; '7 footsteps. . Her parents were m excessively poor circumstances, yet she went to the theatre every "night, and the Kingstreet police ascertained that she seldom returned before 12 o'clock. Dr. Roberts was so struck with the wretched state of the people living m this house that he, on the following day\ gave information concerning thean > to the Society for the Promotion of the Health of Women and Children. This organisation, despite its long silly name, does good work. It is composed mostly of "§as-l siety" dames and Dr. Truljy KflW J King is doing a noble worl? \ % -•

mongst the wretchedly poor women and children of th© 'bigger .towns, and: it happened that he heard immediately of the Garrick case. He streaked round to 200a King-street, and made enquiries for himself. He found that the miserable baby had been fed for j a time on humanised milk. But that proved too expensive, so cow's milk [had been resorted to. Presently lack of cash forbade that also, and the child was given Neave's 'Food. " Very [little even of that was available, so that the child was practically dying of starvation, for • Neave's Food is a concoction that does not allow a i child a proper amount of nourishment. The energetic medico had the* child at once removed to the" Karitane Babies' Home for proper treatment, but too late, for it died there on the 14th instant. He examined the other baby, but it was, m I*he grip of rickets, and was practically past . all help, The doctor found- that Isabella G-arrick had been the mother of fifteen children, of whom about half were dead. Two young boys had recently been taken to an Industrial Home, and Garrick pere was contribr uting fo their support. Oarrick is ah old employee of a well-known mercantije firm (Nimmo and Blanr) m Dunedin, from whom he gets the magnificent weekly wage of 355. One of his arms is slightly crippled, but otherwise he is an ablebodied man, who should certainly he worth more than the miserable pittance he is paid. He is m miserably poor circumstances, and has to sup"port a family ; therefore he dare not growl, * ■ ■ WHILE THE BLOATED FAT MEN who run the seed business grow rich on his earnings. . At the iniquest connected with the death of the baby the whole of the circumstances of the above case were laid bare. Giving evidence, the grandmother of the deceased infant said that her daughters had borne four illegitimate children altogether. One of these had died, and there was another m the Caversham institution. Dr. Coughtrey, who conducted a post mortem' examination, said the weight of the child was under 7 pounds ; it should have been twentyone pounds. Death was practically, due to starvation. ' Harriet T*etremant, Government Inspector of Infant Homes, said that when she visited the Garriicks' home some two months ago the $wo babies, though wretchedly dirty and ill-kept, appeared m a perfectly healthy condition. Had both been removed at once they, would have been saved, she 'believed. The jury returned a veriest m aecorr dance with the evidence- ! . A couple of days later, Elizabeth Garrick, the .fifteen-year-old daughter referred to, was herded in£o #be Juvenile Court along wi : t>h a couple o.f other waifs, and eliapged by the police witto b«iug a. child habitually, frequenting the streets., She was committed to the Caversham Industrial Home. • ) In conclusion, this paper simply wants to drive home the 'criminal carelessness awl neglect of which the Education. Department have been guilty. A word ~need 'only have been given to the police, or to amy of the charitable "■ institutions m Dunedin',and the lives of those children might have been saved. This country wants children, and wants them more as *he birth-rate decreases. 'And it does not matter one little damn Whether those children are legitimate, or whether they are' not ; for the purposes of a young country they require only to be healthy and have average 'brains. It is to be hoped that the authorities are not going to lose sight of this case ; that the lazy official responsible for the. shelving of that inspector's report will .be shown that Ije is expected to do something IN RETURN FOR THE FAT SCREW granted him by an indulgent country ; and that the red-tape-bound Education Department will get a shaking up and learn that the business of the Dominion is to be 'transacted now —not next year. One other point .. might be emphasised. This country maintains a Public. Health ' Department, the several units of which are " expected to be looking" out for just such cases as. are particularised above. There are- several Health Officers m Dunedin who draw big screws, and on t?Jb strength of their coveted billots, pile on no end of boiled dog. The Garrick case is not new. The family have existed m a terrible stste of squalor fer some considerable time. Of ; what use is" a Public Health Office~;wli©n such a case is allowed to remain, until a medical man, on. his own authority, sees fit' to interfere? Further, is thr Dunedin Corporation's Inspector of Nuisances doing his duty ? -