PITIFUL STORIES.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2375, 28 June 1892, Page 3

PITIFUL STORIES.

An afternoon with the Benevolent Trustees, says the Wellington Post, not only brings the listener face to face with grinding poverty, and with poverty selfinduced, suggesting problems far-reaching in their effects, but many strange and pitiful stories are told to the Board. At yesterday’s meeting a man well connected in the Old Country, but evidently shaken mentally and physically, was summoned to attend, His was a gruesome story. He and his wife were passengers in the Pleione when she was stranded on the Wakanae Beach. Both were overturned in the surf during the rescue, and both suffered injuries which necessitated long periods in the Hospital. The oouple have undergone many vicissitudes since keeping together, until last week the wife died in a little cottage in Cottevilloterrace. The husband covered the body up with rags, and lay by it to keep it warm for two days, refusing to believe that the partner of his sorrows was dead, and, refusing to allow the trustees’ undertake';' to remove or coffin the corpse until the Rey. My Yau Stavpren had assured the poor man that she really was dead. After two days the body had to be taken by force, and then the stench was so horrible as to almost overpower the men who did the work- Since thou the survivor has remained in the cottage, refusing to leave it. The trustees have now insisted that ho shall leave it, and go to their boarding bouse, where ) 4 o will bo looked after, 'yesterday he pitifully pleaded for another week to got together his ■ wife’s ’ little things and write letters to his friends in England asking them to send for him. The trustees, in stern kindness, gave him till to-morrow only.. There was another case reported by a lady who wrote that she had discovered a faintly in which the mother was dying of (;onsqmption and want, the children lacking bread—but the people had seen bettor days, and shrank from applying for relief. The neighbours and writer were now doing what they could, and the trustees, when they heard of the case granted rations.