DEATH RATE RISING

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 21979, 25 March 1946, Page 3

DEATH RATE RISING

■ CHILDREN IN HAMBURG BREAD RIOTS DENIED (10 a.m.) LONDON. March 24. A senior public health official stated that infant mortality in Hamburg is now 120 per 1000 births, but the effect of the recent ration cuts would not be apparent for six to eight weeks. There had recently been a sharp rise in the tuberculosis figures. The police, in an effort to prevent plundering and attacks against bread shops, made six raids on crowds on bread shops and arrested 78 persons. The police report that there were three suicides in Hamburg in the last 24 hours, all attributed to trouble about food. The Allied Control Commission officially denied that bread riots, in the true sense of the word, had occurred in Hamburg and asserted that law and order was prevailing throughout the city. Thirty-three workmen at a German State railway machine tool factory collapsed at work as a result of hunger. A tactorv official said many other workers among the 1000 employed at the factory had declared they could not carry on much longer.

A British medical officer who was in Holland during .the widespread starvation last year, said the familiar first signs of starvation —yellow faces and dejection—were apparent among the Hamburg people.

“I think it will be worse here than in Holland.” he said.

The German chief of police, in an endeavour to combat the increasing food looting, issued a 5000-word directive to the food dealers instructing them to board up shop windows as a precautionary measure)

Many arrests have been made since the food riots, which extended over the last 24 hours, began. Special police squads have been stationed in each Hamburg district and a reserve is being held at police headquarters ready to be rushed to the scene of any further lootings. In Berlin, General W. H. Draper, director of the economics division of the Allied Military Government, announced that brewers may use the stocks of malt on hand, but German civilians must go without beer to save barley for bread. R'evealing that nearly 1.000,000 tons of food had been imported in the British zone since June last year, the British authorities announced that, more supplies were on the way to help ease the threat of starvation. Seventy-five thousand tons of flour, bread and grain would be imported between now and the end of April. This amounted to 10 days’ supply at the present rate of consumption. Fresh vegetables from Denmark, dehydrated vegetables from New Zealand, Australia. South Africa and the United States, and fish from Norway would arrive in the next few months.