POLLY PLUM ON THE TREATMENT OF WOMEN IN VICTORIA.

Auckland Star, Volume VI, Issue 1635, 15 May 1875, Page 3

POLLY PLUM ON THE TREATMENT OF WOMEN IN VICTORIA.

In a letter to the Thames Star, Mrs M. A. Colclough, (Polly Plum) writes: —"Please don't copy the unkind remarks of the Temperance News and other papers about me; it might give a wrong impression of the opinion in which I am held in Melbourne The fact is, I have hosts of good friends, but a section of the press at the outset decided that I was a Yankee agitator of the most advanced type of strong-minded females ; an apostle of free love, infidelity, and all the other heresies that respectable, home-loving people regard with horror. Than this opinion, nothing could be further from the truth, and Melbourne people are beginning to discover this, and so the newspapers in question have to eat their words, and the flavour does not agree with them, so they spit out a little venom at the points of their pens. lam now connected with a movement for providing nightly shelter for women out of service, hawkers, needle-women. Ac. It is called the Model Lodging House for Women, 78 and SO, Gore-street, Fitzroy. In Auckland there would be great confidence in my managing such an institution, for (whatever my faults) my old friends know me well and would trust to a faithful and conscientious carrying out of the principles of the institution to the beat of my means and ability. But here some of the newspapers, and notiaeably the Argus which should know better, have tried to write down a much needed institution with a persistent blindness to its usefulness, and a rancour of expression that leads to the fear that they must be actuated by personal animosity against myself, and that nothing I can do can be right unless I could consent to sit quietiy in a corner with my fingers in my eyes, and acknowledge that I deserve disgrace because I chose to lift one voice, even against a multittude of dissentients, on be-l-alf of women who seem to me to get much more the worst of it here than in New Zealand ; for wife-beaters, even when their crime amounts almost to murder, get off very easily, whereas an unfortunate vagrant woman gets it very hot in Court as compared with her male associates aud employers; and if a letter is Bent to some of the papers, calling attention to this, "it is not inserted." But to return to poor women here. To be sure drink is at the foundation of much of the poverty and misery, but a good deal of need and trouble exists from delicate health, desertion by husbands and other causes. The Argus proposes domestic service as a cure for all ills, and it would answer for many, but women delicately reared, or past the prime of life, or with young babies, or bad health, are not suited to be servants, nor can they readily obtain employment even if they try to." kaiparaTshiFping.

(From our own Correspondent.) May 14. The schooner Omaha, Captain Meiklejohn, arrived here on Tuesday from Lyttelton. She will load timber and return to that port. She was followed by the steamer Southern Cross from the Manukau, and the threemasted schooner Manalvie from Wellington. The Amaranthe and Hero are loading timber for the Manukau. The Aspasia is loaded with a cargo of timber, and will sail for Wellington tomorrow. She is the second vessel for Wellington this week. A brieantine, supposed to be from Wellington, Is off the bar, and will probably enter next tide. J&The Mary Webster is also expected.