Mother Love Drove Her To Steal a Coat

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 330, 11 January 1937, Page 3

Mother Love Drove Her To Steal a Coat

SHE WANTED TO TAKE SICK CHILD FROM A HOME OF DARKNESS TO HOSPITAL

Mother love and desperation drove an Islington woman to steal in order that she eould take her seven-year-old boy, Who is losing his sight, to hospital.

The woman, sad-faced, pathetic Mrs. Elizabeth Impiazzi. aged 35, of Park field-street, North London, was bound over at Clerkenwell. Against her was a charge of stealing a boy's overcoat and cap (value 6s lid.) from a cloakroom of an L.C.C. school.

When a Daily Sketch man called at her home he found the place iir darkness. Th irteen-y ear-old Nellie was struggling to make tea for her three brothers —Michael Daniel (10), Freddy (4), and two-year-old Alee. Tearfully she told how Johnny (brother aged 7) now lies in hospital at Swaaley. The story of this unfortunate family commanded the pity of the detective in charge of the case at Clerkenwell. “The husband,” he told the magistrate, “is on short time earning £2 a week. Out of this he has to pay 18s for rent. At night they live in darkness because there is no money for the gas.” Scantily, clothed and almost barefooted—yet this little family manages to be happy and smile in the teeth of poverty.