HIT COW WITH AXE

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20385, 23 October 1940, Page 10

HIT COW WITH AXE

CRUELTY CENSURED GAOL FOR MARINER Describing the case as one of the worst he had heard, Mr. J. Miller. S.M., sentenced Egcrton Thomas Brimford Webster, master mariner, to a month's imprisonment when he appeared in the Magistrate’s Court. Napier, on a charge of cruelty to a cow. Senior-Sergeant I\ C. Felton said Webster was seen, while milking the cow,' to go and get an axe and strike the .animal with the blade on the legs, head and ribs. A constable found the cow lame, and bleeding from the face and from four gashes on its legs. The offence occurred on November 28, 1939. but Webster had disappeared after the police had questioned him and he had only recently been traced. A plea of guilty was entered by Mr. S. H. Morrison, who said Webster had been a dairy-farmer until the war. Being a naval reservist he had been called up and was now navigator on an inter-colonial vessel. “If this man lost his temper,” said the Magistrate, “he could have picked up something less harmful than an axe. It was brutal and wilful treatment. and it is not a case for a fine.”