A CRYING SHAME.

Patea Mail, Volume IX, Issue 1130, 27 December 1883, Page 3

A CRYING SHAME.

It is scarcely credible that in on

Australian colony such a case conld

occur ns that to which Iho Queensland has lately been earnestly drawing the attention of the public and the Gomnracnt. The case is one of a woman having three children, being left a widow by the drowning of her hnsbnnd, npon whom » writ for a debt . of £9B incurred by her husband was served. Not having the money she was sent to gaol more than a year ago, and there she still lies. Her children she left with the matron at the depot at Cooktown, with whom she deposited ..all the money she had, abonl £4O. After being in gaol for a month or two she filed

her Bchednlc in forma pauperis and placed some papers and documents in connection with,.the matter in the bands of a solicitor, to whom she also gave a blank order on the matron at Cook town with .whom -she had left the-. £4O, requesting him to fid it. up for the amount of his charges. Time still passed on. No measures wore taken for her relief, and all her attempts to get satisfaction from the solicitor were in vain. .She could get no reply to her letters, and conld not get her papers back, and on making inquiries of the matron at Gooklown she learned that the solicitor had drawn the whole of' the £4O, V The matron also told her that she could no longer keep the children, whom she wonld have to send to the orphanage;. The poor woman represented her case to the visiting Justice over and over again, bnt be could do nothing in the mutter. And bo the case stands. -There is, it is slated, no means of getting the woman out of gaol or of bringing the rascally solicitor to account for the money. Really it seems absurd for a colony to be giving its interest to the questions who is in or oat of Parliament, or in or out of office, or whether this man or that is better suited for the Speakership, when the end of maintaining the liberties and security of the ci'izen, to which all of this noisily creaking machinery is ostensibly directed, so ntterly fails of realization as in Ibis particular case..— Australasian. ■