Rights of Youth

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 557, 9 January 1929, Page 9

Rights of Youth

Smoking Schoolboy, Girl’s Latch-Key MAGISTRATES DECIDE (Australian and N.Z. Press Association) Reed. 11.10 a.m. LONDON, Tuesday. British magistrates were called on to determine the rights o£ the younger generation. Firstly, the Newport Bench decided that a grammar school headmaster was entitled to cane a schoolboy of 16 lor smoking after hours, though the father permitted him to smoke. When he was flogged before the school as an example, the boy showed fight, until he was caught by two assistant masters, put across a desk and caned, kicking and bellowing wildly. The magistrate awarded the headmaster damages, considering that he had been improperly summonsed. In the second case, a London magistrate decided that it was reasonablo for a father to deprive his daughter, aged 20, of her latchkey, because she was not home at 10 o’clock, waiting to go to dances. The Association of Women Clerks officially expresses the opinion that the father’s viewpoint is preposterous. A girl of 20, it declared, is big enough to look after herself. Other critics point out that within a year the girl would have a vote as good as her father's.