CRUELTY BY PARENTS

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29190, 28 April 1960, Page 21

CRUELTY BY PARENTS

Return Of Stocks. Pillory Urged

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON. April 27,

“We should bring back the stocks and the pillory.” the Earl of Mansfield told the annual meeting of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, in Edinburgh. He added, when his remark was greeted with laughter: “And don't laugh —I really mean it.”

Lord Mansfield said he nut forward seriously the suggestion that there ought to be a return in the more obstinate cases of parental cruelty to a method of punishment of the past. “A woman who. after many warnings, neglects her children, should do an hour every morning in the stocks or in a nice little wire netting cage with a label saying what she has done. I think the threat of that will do some of these lazy sluts a grea' deal more good than a fine." Most people, he said, would go to very great lengths not to be made ridiculous, so the pillory was the answer Fines meant that children were worse of! because their bread was cut. not their parents’ cigarettes. The figures of child neglect and cruelty in Britain were between 25 and 40 per cent, higher than 25 years ago. “And the reason is over indulgence in hire purchase, giving people more television and washing machines, more cigarettes, more beer and more frequent visits to the pictures and dance halls." he said.