Off Target

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31866, 19 December 1968, Page 17

Off Target

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) REDWOOD CITY (California), December 18. Abdullah Bairfield’s aim of fathering 50 children by the time he reaches the age of 40 was deflected in court today. But even if the law had not intervened, Bairfield, aged 39, an American Negro of the Moslem faith, would have faced a strenuous 1969. With only one year to go before his self-imposed deadline, the determined father—a small, bearded and turbaned man with a gold earring in his right ear—has so far sired only 11 children, with a twelfth on the way. Four women have assisted him in his ambitious scheme, including a divorced wife who bore him six children, the court was told by a probation officer, who added: “He sees the children regularly, and the mothers all adore him.”

Bairfield’s trouble, the officer explained, was that he suffered from excessive curvature of the spine, which prevented him from doing hard work and qualified him, and all but one of the children, for welfare benefit. Pleading guilty to charges of non-support Bairfield was sentenced to a year in prison, plus another 200 days if he failed to pay a SUSI2SO fine.