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The Feilding Star. Oroua & Kiwitea Counties Gazette MONDAY, JUNE 10, 1907. Relic of the Dark Ages.

If the charge against an old resident of Waipawa be correct, there are still folk in existence who believe in the times when it was considered perfectly right and proper to set traps by which there wad a danger of sacrificing human life. Henry Arrow, of Waipawa, has been committed for trial on a charge of setting a spring gun in his garden with intent to do bodily harm to any person coming in contact *,vith it. From the evidence given, it appears that a spring gun had been found in accused's garden attached to an apparatus apparently used for setting it off if anyone came in contact with it. One witness described how he had heard the gun go off, and he got into the garden and followed up a wire to where the gun was set. Any person stumbling on the wire would have received a shot in his legs. Another witness deposed that he had set the gun off while getting through accused's fence, in conse- j quence, he thought, of having touched a wire concealed in the grass with his foot. The accused pleaded not ' guilty, and was committed for trial at next sitting of the Supreme Court ■ at Napier. Such a forcible method ■ of directing attention to the evils of garden robbing does not seem to meet with much favor, but it is impossible ! not to sympathise with the victim of ; depredations of the sort. It is astonishing how lightly the crime of orchard-robbing is viewed by the ma- i jority of people, and probably that is why it is so largely on the increase. One does not object so much to the ordinary schoolboy offence of 'the sort, for at the most they steal a little fruit and do no harm to anyone. But it is the wholesale orchardrobber who is such a curse to the community, and there is hardly a decent garden safe from his attentions. We have frequently heard of ruthless robberies of large quantities of fruit, to the production of which the owner had given much time and labor, from orchards in the district, until property-owners almost feel inclined to apply the axe to the trees they have taken so much pains to bring to perfection. While it is not possible to defend a systom of endangering life to protect property, it seems a pity that there is not some method of coping with this class of sneak-thief.

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Permanent link to this item

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/FS19070610.2.4

Bibliographic details

Feilding Star, Volume I, Issue 287, 10 June 1907, Page 2

Word Count
424

The Feilding Star. Oroua & Kiwitea Counties Gazette MONDAY, JUNE 10, 1907. Relic of the Dark Ages. Feilding Star, Volume I, Issue 287, 10 June 1907, Page 2

The Feilding Star. Oroua & Kiwitea Counties Gazette MONDAY, JUNE 10, 1907. Relic of the Dark Ages. Feilding Star, Volume I, Issue 287, 10 June 1907, Page 2