DUNEDIN GOSSIP.

Cromwell Argus, Volume XVII, Issue 833, 31 March 1885, Page 3

DUNEDIN GOSSIP.

(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.) March 26. The case of which I sent you word by telegraph in which great cruelty to children is charged against Alexander Fleming and his wife is causing much public excitement. I* lemmg is an express driver and a decent-looking man ; his wife is a young woman who appears to have been serving with him after his wife (the mother of the children) died, and whom he married four or five months ago. The neighbors of the Flemings at Kensington have been particularly aggrieved over the affair, and have stoned their house, hooted them and burnt them in effigy by way of showing their disgust. So far only two cases have been gone into at the Police Court. These are both eises in which the eldest of the children (the boy aged 11) has been beaten—once by the stepmother, and the other time by his father. But all the three children have been beaten, so that there will be several charges still to come on. The stepmother according to the evidence which has been given has been the worst of the two. It seems that on Friday last she sent the boy to school with his knickerbockers sewed up as high as they would go, so as to expose the whole of his leg, taking this extraordinary means of punishing the boy because in the middle of the night he had got up and lit a caudle to get something to eat. Some of the. neighbors followed the boy home at dinner-time, and, neighbor-like, gave the stepmother a bit of their mind for treating the boy the way she did. Thereupon the boy tells the following story : " My stepmother told me Iwouldgetahammering when my father came home for bringing the neighbors around. I stayed in the house after that. My father came home a little late that night. Before my father came home I got a hammering. The servant—my stepmothergave me a hammering. She told me to take my clothes off. I stripped myself altogether until I was naked. I was in my bedroom. I was laid on the bed face downwards. My stepmother beat me with a whip. It was my father's cart whip. I was beaten all over my back—not on my legs. It was a sore beating. The whiphandle produced is the one. I did not cry out, because I would get it three times worse. It hurt me afterwards to lie down on my back." The stepmother (it will be noticed that the boy calls her the servant) has been committed for trial on this charge. The beating for which the father has been before the Bench is one given to the boy previously, but it does not seem to have been so severe as that given him by the stepmother. The boy admits that he had been striking his sister, for which of course he deserved punishment; but there are degrees in punishment, and the father, if the boy's statement is true, certainly overstepped the mark, to say the least of it. The boy says :—" I got this beating for hitting my sister Mary. I had beaten her that day. I hit her with my closed fist when she was in the scullery. My father gave me a hammering. I was taken out of bed; my nightdress was taken off. He tied me to a bedpost, and beat me hard with the whip produced. He beat me on the back and hips. The beating left marks." The whipping with a cart-whip of a little boy, naked, is decidedly an extreme form of punishment. Fleming has been committed for trial also on this charge.

During the hearing of the cases the Court has been crammed, principally with women from the Kensington neighborhood. They have shown their interest in the evidence by constant muttered comments—" Oh, the brute "—and that sort of thing at the most touching state ments in the evidence, and by much sobbing and crying. Their bitterness towards Mrs Fleming is very apparent. She is a smallish, waspish-looking woman; and if she was at the mercy of the indignant matrons of Kensington for a few minutes would be in a condition which would necessitate her.being " swep' up," as the negroes say. The charge for beating the smallest of the children, who is only five years old, and whose body was marked nearly as badly as the boy's, has also been heard against the stepmother. The poor little thing had wet the sheets. Her brother had tried in vain to dry them so that his sister would be saved the beating. The stepmother stripped her as she did the boy, put her face downwards on the bed, and whipped her so badly that the bruises still remain. Mrs Fleming has also been committed for trial on this charge.

Captain William Jackson Barry ("old Jack Barry," as he used to be called, but he has got a handle to his name since he set out on his travels and became an author) is still in Sydney. He was one of the earliest to volunteer for service in the Soudan contingent, but his services were for some reason not accepted. In a letter to a friend in Dunedin the < 'aptain gives the following copy of his letter of application and it may interest some of his old acquaintances:—"To the Honorable the AttorneyGeneral (Mr Dalley), Sir, —I have the honor to sxxbmit to you for the consideration of your Executive my application for service with the New South Wales contingent under orders for the Soudan. I have served with the Naval Brigade at the taking of Canton under Admiral Elliott, and on board H.M.S. Prosperine.Britomart and Alligator. In California and Oregon I had tin command of mounted frontiersmen acting against the hostile Modocs with success and but trifling loss. As captain of the Flying Fish I had several severe brushes with the Natives of the New Hebrides. Should your Honor's military advisers be pleased to grant my request I shall be in readiness to accept any position on the expeditionary force they may please to command." After this who will grudge the gallant captain the title he gives himself in the letter, " the old warrior. He adds that once more he is " on velvet, " though not so are many New Zealanders in Sydney, who sleep in the Domain and get a meal where they can. The Captain regrets he did not go to the Soudan ; it would have been a capital chapter for his new book.