PROTECTION OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN.

Evening Post, Volume LXVIII, Issue 101, 26 October 1904, Page 4

PROTECTION OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN.

The Wellington Branch of the Society for the Protection of Women and Children held its seventh annual meeting last night, when His Excellency the Governor following the example of his predecessor, took the chair. The Committee's report, of which we published a summary a few days ago, showed an excellent year's work, and the Society is entitled to congratulations upon the result, and also upon the success of last night's meeting. Fifty-four new cases were dealt with during the year, and it says much for the judgment with which the work has been carried on that only four of these were brought into Court, and in each the proceedings were successful, while in four other cases prosecutions resulted in settlement out of Court. Not the least interesting part of the report was that 'devoted to a precis of the criticisms passed by the .Committee upon the Premier's memorandum/with regard to Child-life Preservation, and a good deal of attention was properly paid to the subject by more than one of the speakers. The dangers of the indiscriminate multiplication of Homes or Institutions, arid of granting State aid where it was not needed were very clearly indicated in the resolutions for warded by the Committee to the Premier, and it is gratifying, ' as Mr. Joynt observed, to find a philanthropic Society setting its face against one of the perilous tendencies of the day which unthinking philanthropy is only -too apt to encourage. With regard to one of the Premier's proposals, for instance, the Committee expressed the opinion, which the annual meeting has now endorsed, that "further State aid in payment of maternity expenses was unnecessary, as such aid was already ungrudgingly administered by the existing and the Charitable Aid Board anPßenevolent Trustees." On the other hand, no doctrinaire objection is taken to State action as such, and the proposal for "the establishment of Free Kindergartens for children between the ages of three and five, if possible in connection with the primary schools," is one which we should be glad indeed, to see adopted. Another important recommendation which the Society made to the Premier was with regard to the treatment of charges against children in the Police j Courts. "The Society especially desired to draw the attention of the Premier to the system of Children's Courts in South Australia, which it has advocated for several years, and hoped, that a room will be set 'apart, quite distinct from the j Police Court, where the cases of neglected and criminal children could bo heard in private, so as to save the children from familiarity with the associations of the Police Court." There is no reason whatever why the carrying out of this wise and humane suggestion should be delayed until the many large questions raised by the Premier's memorandum can be dealt with by Parliament. No legislation is needed to protect children already wronged by society from the further injury involved in the exposure to the associations of a criminal Court, and the Minister of Justice might see to it at once. A much niore debatable question is raised when the Society urged " that all cases of divorce and of offences against women and children

should be heard in camera, and that Judges and Magistrates should be empowered to clear the Court at their discretion." There can be no objection to the discretionary power with proper safeguards, but the Supreme Court Judges, who already possess the power in divorce cases, are very wisely chary about using it, and publicity is so essential to the due administration of justice, even in cases which may involve much suffering to innocent parties, that we are sure that a general rule of secrecy in the matters referred to would be a fatal error. But with this exception there is verjlittle in the report at which we feel d.sposed to cavil, and we heartily concur in the encomiums of His Excellency und other speakers on the valuable nature of the work which the Society is gratuitously and unostentatiously performing.