SHOCKING ILL-TREATMENT OF CHILDREN.

Evening Post, Volume XXI, Issue 110, 12 May 1881, Page 2

SHOCKING ILL-TREATMENT OF CHILDREN.

♦ [.UNITED PRESS ASSOCIATION.] Auckland, 11th May. The Waikato police laid three informations against Mr. Shepherd, a Waikato settler, for ill-using John Muir and Elizabeth Hill, children from the Home for Neglected j Children. One information charges him | with tying Muir to a dray, and flogging him with supplejacks, another with knocking down and cruelly beating the girl, and the third with neglecting to provide them with proper food and clothing. A constable went to the farm to investigate the matter. It is said that the boy was lodged in a place little better than a pigstye, and his food thrown to him as if he were a dog, and that he had even got nothing better at times to eat than raw potatoes. He had tried on more than one occasion to escape, bnt was retaken. Another boy had bolted and .succeeded in escaping^ The constable saw quite sufficient oh his arrival at the place, and heard enough! from Shepherd to warrant him in removing him at once to Hamilton and to return for thegirl. Latkb. The charges against Mr. Shepherd for illtreating the boy Muir were dismissed, the evidence being contradictory. The boy was confused in dates. For the assault on the girl Hill was fined .£5, or three months' imprisonment. The magistrate directed the police to find the boy Sam, stated to have witnessed the assault on Muir, but who had absconded from Shepherd's service, and if his evidence corroborated the children's, to indict the defendant ior perjnry.