CHILDREN IN ALLNIGHT QUEUES

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 259, 29 July 1937, Page 13

CHILDREN IN ALLNIGHT QUEUES

Doctor’s Condemnation INJURIOUS TO HEALTH Dominion Special Service. Dunedin, July 28. "It is deplorable I bat this sort of thing should ever have been started in New Zealand, but. I am not sure what can be done about it in a country where people can do what they like,” declared Dr. .Seideberg McKinnon, president of the Society for the Protection of Women aud Children, when the presence of young women and small boys iu the queue at the booking office for tile Otago-Southland Rugby football match was mentioned to her today. The society, she said, deplored the whole thing, not only from the health point of view—and there could be no question that a night in the open in such cold weather as was being experienced at the present time was injurious to health—but also on moral grounds. At least some effort should be made by the police to control the queue insofar as the admission to it of young women and children was concerned. Girls under the age of 20 years and boys under 15 should be sent home. Dr. Seidelierg McKinnon said site bad noticed in a published photograph of the queue the figure of a small boy of tender years, and the presence of young girls in such a gathering, sleeping out on the pavement or under a veranda, was even more regrettable. She added that the whole silly system should be-put an end to. No matter how warmly clad or carefully wrapped up people were, a night in the open under such circumstances could lie expected to do nobody, young or old, any good. There must; be some other way of getting over the difficulty of the rush for seats at important events of the kind. In any case, it was her intention to bring the matter up for discussion at the next meeting of the committee of her society.