GLOOMY MT. EDEN.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 241, 11 October 1929, Page 5

GLOOMY MT. EDEN.

RELIC OF GRUESOME PAST. ITS ABOLITION URGED. LABOUR MEMBER'S PLEA. (By Telegraph.—Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, this day. Never a session passes without r >rence being made to the desirability of abolishing Mount Edcii gaol, once described by the late General Brain well Booth, as "a gloomy, shiversome horror, comparable only to the worst prisons in Continental countries." The Rev. Clyde Carr, Labour member for Timaru, brought up the subject in the House of Representatives yesterday afternoon, when he urged that Mount Eden gaol be abolished. "If ever there was a battlemented relic of a gruesom past, it is Mount Eden gaol," said Mr. Carr. "I can quite believe that if the warders are not ogres and Grendels to start with, they would soon become such in a gloomy prison of this description. If the prisoners are not criminals when the go in. I can believe that they would be by the time they come out. I hope it will soon go the way of the old Lyttelton gaol." Mr. H. T. Armstrong (Christehurcli East): It's a pity it hadn't gone sooner! (Loud laughter). Mr. Carr: Yes, I can quite appreciate the reference of the honourable member for Christehurch East, It was pointed out by Mr. Carr that in England; prisons of the Mount Eden type were being abolished, and it had been found that the country could get on quite well without them.