THE UNDESERVING AGED.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVII, Issue 29, 3 February 1916, Page 2

THE UNDESERVING AGED.

» A SOCIOLOGICAL PROBLEM. WANTED, A PHILANTHROPIST. "Another of those typical cases that show the need for a half-way house where we could commit persons of noncriminal tendencies, and keep them there when it is for the good of the community and of the individuals concerned that they should be kept under shelter •and surveillance, without the punishment of being sent to gaol."' Thus Mr. F. V. Frazer, S.M., commented this morning when a man named Reynolds, aged HO years, came before him on a charge of vagrancy, the man's history showing that he was afflicted with a form of creeping paralysis, unable to work, but so much given to drink, and of such contumacious nature that he was just a prot in the usual charitable institutions, which lie left just whenever the fancy for a drink came to him, then becoming a wanderer on the streets. ■ His Worship supplemented his remarks when a woman of 71 years came before him for vagrancy, her history being that of drift and drink, but also showing no criminal strain. "It would be a great blessing to these old people." he said, '"if there were a house of shelter, and j with rigid rules, to fill in the gap beI tween the mental hospital and the gaol. j Many of these people are in their present state now simply through drifting, I and for their own protection and the i protection of other people they should Ihe kept away from the rest oi the com J mimitv. The gaol is not the place for ' them, but as things are we can only send them there to -provide them with 1 food and shelter and keep them off the streets." "Such a place as there is need for has 'been advocated by the Probation Officer I Rev. F. Jeffreys) and myself, and the newspapers have helped, but nothing lias been done. If the Government can't undertake it at ■present it is possible that some public-spirited individual with plenty of spire cash might be moved to do something of the kind. It is certainly vcrv necessary." In default of having any other place with t'.ie necessary walls and discipline to send the latter aged derelict, his Worship reluctantly sentenced her to three months' hard labour.