THE LECTURING CORONER.

Evening Post, Volume LX, Issue 104, 30 October 1900, Page 5

THE LECTURING CORONER.

* I regret to say that we are threatened with, what, for lack of a better word, must be called a moral crusade, and' one of the most objectionable kind possible (writes the New Zealand correspondent of the Australasian). The originator is Mr. James Ashcroft, who holds the posi- v tion of Official Assignee and Coroner of Wellington. The crusade is against what is euphemistically called "the decline in the birth rate" — in other words, against the method or methods supposed to be adopted by a large number of people in New Zealand to keep their families within reasonable and manageable proportions. I am convinced, though the fact does not yet seem to be generally perceived, that Mr. Ashoroft became an active crusader quite by accident. The facts painful. A young Wellington girl of 17, named Luke, of respectable family, found herself in an unhappy position. The mother, who was greatly distressed— "demented," as she afterwards expressed it before the Coroner— sent the girl to a sort of semiprofessional woman, "to see what could be done for her." The girl died, and an inquest was held over which Mr. Ashcroft presided. The mother, who seemed utterly crushed between her bereavement and the position in which she found ] herself, gave ncr evidence in a straight forward way, admitting that in her "demented" state she had sought for special treatment. The Coroner lectured the distracted mother in a way that was positively cruel, winding up by recommending her to go on her knees and pray for forgiveness for what she had done, etc The Wellington Evening Post very properly came down on the Coroner next day, uodnting out that it was no part of his

; business to lecture witnesses. Mr. Aslicroft, smarting under the criticism, wouldnave it betieved>th-at he had spoken out of ' long-cherished indignation at practices* which tended to repress the birth-rate. He is terribly fluent when he takes to writing, and lie is scattering open letters., uiul pamphlets right and left, threatening to "devote the few remaining years of liia life to the cause.'' The affair is not without its humorous side, for when Mr. Ashcroft began expatiating in his-high-falutin style upon tho "joys and pangs of motherhood," he Mas answered by person**, evidently women, who wanted to know what he could possibly know about either the joys or the pangs of motherhood.