WHOSE LIABILITY?

Grey River Argus, 26 November 1935, Page 5

WHOSE LIABILITY?

“Have you seen wrmng rn the papers lately about ‘Bella’?” said Miss R. Colebrook, an Auckland accountant, at the citizens’ mass protest meeting against unemployment and current social conditions at Auckland last week. (Bella is the lady hippopotamus at the Auckland Zoo and has just achieved fame by producing an offspring). Miss Colebrook’s question was greeted by a shout of laughter. “Well,” continued the speaker, suddenly changing her tone, “in the same week we have read of the care lavished on Bella’s baby, and also of the death of a human baby because the parents had not even money enough to pay the toll call to the doctor. Bella’s baby is saleable, it is an asset; the human baby, under our accursed social system is a liability.”