EFFORTS TO SAVE SON

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 90, 5 February 1947, Page 6

EFFORTS TO SAVE SON

PARENTS BURN SALT

THOUGHT NEIGHBOURS WERE WITCHES

Because they believed that their neighbours were exercising witchcraft against their four year old son, a Wiltshire couple put salt on the fire to counteract the influence. It had to be common salt, not table salt, they stressed.

The survival in the 20th century of this medieval belief in black magic was alleged when the parents pleaded not guilty, before a special court at Trowbridge, to ill-treating and neglecting the child in a manner likely to cause injury to his health.

They were Ernest Samuel Gale, aged 44, a textile worker, and Violet Maria Gale, aged 38, of Studley Rise, Trowbridge. The son, Edward, neatly dressed in a brown coat and hat, sat on the lap of his weeping mother throughout the hearing, eating biscuits from a large paper bag and looking at coloured pictures in a book. Mr J. B. Taylor, for the N.S.P.C.C. said that Mr Eric Brewer, one of the society’s inspectors, went to the Gales’s home and found the child looking cowed and pale. The parents -agreed that the child had been kept up late and slept in their bed. “Something was said about putting salt on the fire to stop the child crying,” Mr Taylor said. “When questioned about this the mother, said: ‘Edward wakes up crying, scratches me, and pulls my hair. We get up and put salt on the fire. We hear a chinking noise at the back of the grate and the crying stops.’

“The inspector was also told by Mr and Mrs Gale that from time to time they heard banging noises on the wall at the back of the grate, and that when salt was put on the fire they heard a pinging or chinking noise and the banging behind the wall ceased.”

It was not suggested that the parents were cruel and heartless towards the child, who was clean and well clothed.

It was simply that through mistaken, not malicious, motives they had been following a course of conduct which amounted to neglect likely to result in unnecessary danger to the child’s health.

Inspector Eric Brewer, -of Bath, said he advised the parents to provide a proper bed for the child, but when he visited the home advice had not been taken.-Then three days later he found that' this child was then sitting “forlorn and alone” on the damp pavement. “I felt that the practices of the parents might already have affected the child’s mind.”

Dr. Jean Murray, district medical officer of health, said Mrs Gale told her the child would not allow her to "dress him. She would sometimes try to do so for two and a half hours and then have to send for his mother.

After Mr Taylor had explained that no order could be made in law for the child to be taken to another place until the present case was proved, or the child found to be in moral danger, Mr Trevor Hill- for the parents, had a short discussion with them.

Afterwards he said they were willing to apply for the child to be taken into a nursery school for three months. -

During that period the father would subject himself to medical treatment, and the parents would fix up proper'bedroom accommodation for the child. When the child returned they would do everything they could to bring it up in a proper manner.

The magistrate agreed to this and the case was formally adjourned for three months,-“the child to be taken to a place of safety.”