Untitled

Shannon News, 3 July 1923, Page 2

“That married farmers should be allowed £IOO exemption on their incomes for their wives’ services on the farms,” was one of the remits brought before the annual conference of the Otago Farmers’ Union. Mr F. Waite, in moving the remit, said: “Goodness knows why the wives had to work. But, as it is, £IOO is a low enough value to place on their services.” The remit was adopted. With the demolition; of Lyttelton Gaiol there will be removed a notable example of the old punitive 'prison system (says the Lyttelton “Times”). Everything about the place speaks of punishment. The cells are little .tombs in which the solitary occupants must have found their albode too circumscribed and forbidding for hope to enter in and lighten the cold monotony of their misery. As the old cells island to-day, gaping in the southern wall they seem to- tell of nothing but death, and might appropriately have been the resting place of mummies. The old, cloister-like yards, which seemed little else than open graves, have been swept away. They were gloomy, dismal places into which the sun threw only fleeting glances, leaving them hurriedly to 1 the shadow and despair that seemed to brood in cold passionless silence over them. No cheerful sound ever penetrated, theni, or, indeed any noise that did not carry a reminder that echoes can roll in tombs. They were well suited to the philosophy that the only tiling to do with crime was. to punish.