MAORI FANATICISM.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 274, 13 November 1908, Page 2

MAORI FANATICISM.

MURDER OF AN INFANT. PARENTS GUILTY OF MAN SLAUGHTER.

By Telegraph.—Press Association. Auckland, Last Night. , At the Supreme Court, Hirini Ngntimo Hohepa and Emu Hirini Ngntimo Hohepa, a young native married couple, were charged with the murder of their eighteen months' old child at Utaroa, near Mangakahia on July 2nd last, ilie circumstances, said Mr. Tole in his opening remarks, were particularly awful and revolting, and hardly creditable: as happening in a civilised country, A! number of natives, including the' two accused and their child, were living together, and on the night in question it appeared that ""Timo," as the father of the male accused was called, ordered one of hiß own sons, a child of abou six years, to go and wash himself, and then to jump on the fire. The boy jumped on the fire, getting considerably burnt, and then Timo ordered one of 1 the natives to throw the young child of the accused on the fire. The order was not obeyed, whereupon the old man became enraged and ordered the female prisoner to put her child on the fire as it was a bastard, Apparently she began to cry, but upon being urged threw the child on the fire, but it struggled off 1 and she asked Timo if she should put it back. He replied "Yes," and she did so, but again the child struggled off the fire, screaming in agony, Subsequently it died, and its death was followed by some extraordinary rites. It seemed, said Mr. Tole, that some evil influence sometimes affects Maoris, but our code of criminal law recognised nothing save mental unsoundness as extenuation. Fanaticism, he contended, was a matter of imagination which did not release persons from responsibility or afford excuse for crime so long as it did not so affect them as to take away their reason.

The first witness was a young native woman who said that Timo had declared (hat the child must die. It, win thrown on the fire and wriggled off several times, being put back every time, the husband exhorting his wife, who wished to save the child, to "be stout-hearted; let it remain." Ema then addressed the child, saying, "Go lience, Satan, evildoer I" and the child crawled off the fire, but she threw it on again. Three times the child was thrown on _ the fire, and the third time it died. Timo then suggested a prayer and one was said.

Mekerene Matiu Hohepa, a son of Timo, said that in the course of his strange doings Timo had declared: "We must all die; we shall all be burnt with fire," and another time, throwing himself down, said: "That is how martyrs fall."

The jury returned a verdict of manslaughter, recommending the prisoners to mercy on the ground of religious insanity.