PRISONERS PROTEST

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 947, 14 April 1930, Page 16

PRISONERS PROTEST

THEFT OF CHALICES FROM CATHEDRAL “IT’S NOT CRICKET” “That this congregation of prisoners heartily protests against the theft of sacred vessels from the House of God, and urges the thief to restore the chalices immediately.” The foregoing was the text of a resolution passed at Mount Eden Gaol last evening as a protest against the theft of valuable communion cups from St. Paul’s Anglican Cathedral, Dunedin, last week. The city missioner, the Rev. Jasper Calder, said he was saddened to think that any man should sink so low as to steal the sacred vessels from a church. “NOT CRICKET” “Now. boys, I have a brain wave,” Mr. Calder said. “Y’ou and I between us might get those sacred vessels back. Suppose we send a resolution of protest to the Dunedin papers showing that 350 prisoners thought this theft was ‘not cricket/ Considering what the church has done, and is doing, it’s rather like biting the hand that feeds you, don’t you agree?” The motion was moved by a “longsentence” man in the prison choir, and a seconder was forthcoming from a dozen places. When a show of hands was called for in favour of the resolution, the men put up their hands “like schoolboys voting for a holiday,” as Mr. Calder described it. The Rev. G. E. Moreton, Anglican prison chaplain, mentioned that great sentimental value attached to the cups, one of which had been in use for 40 years.