SOCIAL SORES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 311, 26 May 1911, Page 5

SOCIAL SORES.

A MINISTER'S INDICTMENT. By Telegraph.—Press Association. Dunediji, Last Night. At the annual meeting of the Society for the Protection of Women and Children to-day, the president (Rev. Canon Curzon-Siggers) urged the necessity for raising the age of consent. The society's report showed that in certain percentage of illegitimate cases girls became mothers just on or just over the age of 18, and some of them within the age of 17 years were mothers for a second time. He said there was a growing tendency for young fellows to go for week-ends and to arrange for girls to go with them. He hoped very shortly to make an example in the police court of one such case. The speaker urged makirig provision of a house of detention for girls who became mothers by immoral means. He also raised the question of dealing with the mentally unlit, and said that while the Government made some provision for males mentally defective, there was no provision for mentally defective females. He strongly urged sterilisation as treatment for the defectives of society. He had very strong feelings on the subject of applying the curfew law so as 't'o keep young people off the streets at late hours, and inculcate a taste for home life. He felt the state of morality in Dunedin was not what it should be, and, unfortunately, Dunedin was no worse than other places. He hoped the Government would appoint & commission to inquire into and provide means for checking the birth of the wAt.