A STRANGE CASE.

Evening Star, Issue 7252, 1 July 1887, Page 2

A STRANGE CASE.

■j % - As it is believed that some of the parties alluded to in the? subjoined clipping from a. recent number of the 'Australasian' atone time lived in Dunedin, the paragraph shouldnot be without interest:—"Apenevering reporter in San Francisco has ban trying, with the zeal of hLy>rofeßsion,i||o«4 at the bottom of a strange, case, in figure some persons who were in New Zealand. The principal objed»Hjs attack was one Henry M. CansJt-' machine agent and chief sachem>of a spiritualists,' noted for his 'jubilant sition' and ' love of controversy,' and the the reporter has undertaken is to find out !■ bow Osrr. and bis wife (a nurse) got posses- ~ sion of a girl named Alice Burrows, now about fifteen. Mr and Mrs Carr have been married not quite two years, the lady's previous name being Mary Curtain, though Carr says her surname was Beffe. Both were in New Zealand ; the girl Alice and a boy named Freddy crossed the Pacific with them in June-July, 1886, but the marriage took place in San Frarciseo on theirarrival. Thecasehasbecomepublicproperty through some legal proceedings being taken to get the girl out of the Magdalen Asylum, in which she was placed by Carr. Carr'a allegation is that she had become vicious and was uncontrollable ; but the nans report her to be excellent in her behavior, and she denies all the sins imputed to her by Carr, who contradicts his own statement by admitting that he had tried to peuuade Alice to marry his son, a street-car conductor, thirty years of age. The girl, having got into the Asylum, wants to stay there, to be away from the Cain. Both her parents are dead. She Bays that they lived at 'Chatham,' New Zealand, where her father was shipping clerk; but there being no such post-town in the Colony, the reporter must nave written the name wrongly down. As she remembers that her father (whose name was John Burrows) owned several houses, and that she herself always wore 'nice clothes,' it is surmised by the San Francisco reporter that the Carrs possessed themselves, of whatever property was coming to the Burrows children ; bnt Carr says that the father was a laboring man, and laughs at the idea of his owning houses. It is a very queer case the modest behavior of the girl in Court, and with the nuns, the fearful things said about her by Carr, Can's many self-contradictions, and various minor incidents, all contributing to awaken curiosity, and a desire to get at the truth of the story. Perhaps, now that the case is in the newspapers, it will attract notice in the right quarter in New Zealand. It seems that the Burrows family four children: three girls—Mary (18), who is married to one of Carr's sons in New Zealand; Theresa (16), Alice (15); and Frank. The case occupies three columns of the 'Weekly?Chronicle of April 28, and outline portraits are given of all the persons conspicuous in it. As the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children has interested itself in Alice Burrows,. it is probable that the complete facts will in due time be gathered together, and precautions taken, at any rate, to prevent the girl going back into the custody of the Carrs."