AN UNDESIRABLE MIGRANT

Evening Star, Issue 18532, 15 January 1924, Page 10

AN UNDESIRABLE MIGRANT

NOT WANTED IN NEW ZEALAND. [Special io thb •Sxae.l CHRISTCHTmOH, January 14. A seven teen-year-old girl, who appeared in the Magistrate’s Court this afternoon, •was characterised as an undesirable immigrant, and the bench considered that stops should be taken, if it were possible, to deport her to England. Florence Ruby Smith was charged with being an idle and disorderly person, in that she had insufficient lawful visible means of support. Florence had appeared on this charge on December 24, and was remanded to appear for sentence when called upon on condition that she remained in S't. Anne’s Home. She then had been only a few weeks in this country, and had been in several positions, all of whioh she had been unable to keep. After giving a good deal of .trouble at St. Anne’s Homo, she was caught While endeavoring to escape. (Sister Rose, matron of St. Anne’s Home, told the bench that when Florence entered the home she her intention of getting away. “I’m going to get away on the first chance I get," she told the matron, and she refused to do any kind of work. One evening the girl refused to go to -bed, and the matron sat up with her uinitil .midnight, when footsteps were hoard round the house. They were the footsteps, the matron thought, of a friend of accused’s. The next evening a policeman waited downstairs with the matron, and after 10 o’clock the girl crept downstairs fully dressed, with her slices in her hand. The Bench said that there was ’ no course left open to it hut to send the accused to gaol. She would he sentenced to one month’s imprisonment, aud declared an undesirable immigrant. The bench recommended that sthps should he taken to see if she could he deported hock to England, whence she came. If there were no law by which she could be deported, she must be sent to an industrial school until she was twenty-one yea re of age.