ORGY OF DESTRUCTION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 July 1939, Page 4

ORGY OF DESTRUCTION

SIX-YEAR-OLD GIRL WRECKS HOME. JUST TO ANNOY PARENTS. Just to annoy her parents, a six-year-old girl wrecked her home at Brixton. She is now in a remand home, to which she was sent by the Lambeth Juvenile Court. The magistrates, told that the child was beyond control, also heard that when her parents reached the house a few nights ago they found that she had: Ripped up a three-piece suite with a pair of scissors. Piled all the front room .furniture in the centre of the room. Ripped up the cushions and scattered the filling a foot deep on the floor. Ripped up the mattresses of an oak bed and divan, and torn, the blankets and sheets into strips. Tipped up a glass china cabinet, torn out the shelves, and smashed the contents. Stuffed the clock with feathers. Ripped open oak dining chairs and shaved the grate brush. Slashed the curtains, torn open an oak photograph frame and ripped up a photo of herself. Severely scratched a walnut bedroom suite and furniture in other rooms.

Inspector Rivers, of the N.S.P.C.C., who had been called by the parents, estimated the damage at £5O, and added that the child would not keep on any clothes except a pair of dancing shoes.

He produced a suitcase full of child’s clothes which had been ripped and torn and cut. “I could not believe a child capable of so much damage,” he added. “But when I asked her about it, she quite calmly admitted it.” Telling of the child’s misdeeds the mother and father stated that' she ripped up Treasury notes and threw them into the fire “to worry them.” The mother had been forced to go back to work five weeks ago to help pay for damage done by their daughter. The child had walked out of the top-floor flat when neighbours were looking after her, and got into their own home to do this damage. She got up in the middle of the night to break up the bedroom furniture.