A TOHUNGA FINED.

Taranaki Daily News, 24 October 1917, Page 5

A TOHUNGA FINED.

AMUSING (PROCEEDINGS. By Telegraph.—'Press Association. Gisborne, Last Night. An elderly unlive named ICamira Tarairi, was fined £25 and £9 7s coats 1)V Mr. Barton, magistrate, to-day, on a charge under the Tohunga Suppression Act. The charge arose out of the recent attempted suicitle of it native, who alleged that defendant had bewitched him.

Amusing evidence was given by native witnesses. The wife of the mar. who attempted suicide said she was under defendant's treatment at Napier, He commanded her to return to Gisborne, pour boiling water in her boxes to exorcise spirits, and on reaching Gisborne to spit on the sand, and draw her left heel through the spittle. Other natives gave evidence that defendant, when consulted for various ills, made the sign of the cross over them, and prayed for them. They described him as a man of prayer, and said that at a meeting house he prayed night and morning. Mr. Burnard, for defendant, urged that there was little difference in these* accounts of defendant's acts and in what is done in orthodox methods of Chris* tianity. His Worshio fixed the default at two montba.