TRANSFER TO PAPARUA

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27588, 19 February 1955, Page 8

TRANSFER TO PAPARUA

PHYSICAL FITNESS OF PRISONER

MEDICAL REPORTS TO BE OBTAINED

(From Our Own Reporter)

WELLINGTON, February 18. Senga Florence Whittingham, who today had been sentenced at Dunedin to three years’ imprisonment for manslaughter, would be transferred tomorrow to the Paparua Prison, said the Secretary of Justice (Mr S. T. Barnett) this afternoon. Until medical reports on the prisoner’s fitness were received. Whittingham would be held at Paparua, he said, and afterwards her future place of imprisonment would be decided. All sentences of imprisonment in New Zealand automatically include hard labour, said Mr Barnett, but in Whittingham’s case, because of evidence introduced during her trial, there was some question of her physical fitness, and this factor would be taken into consideration.

The maximum time which Whittingham can expect to have cut from her sentence for good behaviour is nine months. This means that she can hope to be released in May, 1957. She will be engaged in sewing, laundry work, or some such task until her sentence is served, and the Prisons Board decides she can be released.