IN THE FATHERLAND

Taihape Daily Times, 7 December 1917, Page 3

IN THE FATHERLAND

GERMAN JUSTICE AGAIN. The Dusseldorf, Volkzeitung gives another to the many proofs already adduced that the principles of justice, as it is ordinarily understood in civilised communities, convey no appeal to the German mind: The wife of a merchant named WilWjlm Kuckelberg, was charged at Dusseldorf, with brutally ill-treating her six-and a-half-year-old stepdaughter Maria, whom she had for months past daily struck on the face with her from her nose and mouth.

This torture was varied on Sundays and feast days, when the child, after being stripped, was beaten into unconsciousness by blows with a carpetbeater. Finally, passers-by noticed a little girl hanging suspended from a window latch on the third floor of Kuckelberg's house, threatening every moment to fall into the street. A chauffr, operating from the window of the adjoining premises, succeeded with great difficulty in pulling the child into the house. Several neighbours stated in court that they had frequently remonstrated with Frau Kuckelberg for causing the child to drag heavy buckets of coal from the cellar to the third ■ floor, usually between four and five o'clock in the morning. The headmistress of the St. Catherine School declared that on repeated occasions little Maria, who had arrived weeping at school, had fainted( from exhaustion during lessons and had to be conveyed home in a state of collapse. Many other persons including a doctor, who stated that the child's back and chest were raw and covered with bruises, bore witness to her stepmother's horrible brutality. There was no defence beyond the woman's denial, but, nevertheless, Frau Kuckelberg, was discharged.