BORSTAL BOV MAKES GOOD.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 16 February 1927, Page 2

BORSTAL BOV MAKES GOOD.

RELEASED TO SAVE HIS SWEETHEART. WEDDING ROMANCE. LONDON, Dec. 15. Five years ago a 19-year-old Lambeth lad named Jackson was in a Borstal institution, while his sweet heart. Mary Connars, pleaded tearfully for his release to save her honour (says the Daily Express). The lad had been convicted of a minor offence. He was the son of respectable hard working parents. The girl kept house for her widowed father, a market porter, and played the part of little mother to her two schoolboy brothers. The Daily Express took up the case, and championed the cause of the girl and her unborn baby. Mr. Frank Briant, the member of Parliament, for North Lambeth, whom his constituents call “ Daddy-o,” threw all the weight of his influence into the campaign to save the honour, and heal the breaking heart of the “little mother” of Rlaekfriars Road. The battle ended in the release of the young fellow, and the couple were married by special license in St. George’s Cathedral. Mr.. Frank Briant, M.P., acted as best man, and furnished a room for them in the lad’s mother’s house. All this happened five years ago, and people often wondered whether the lad would make good. He has. Jackson fought a hard battle against ill-luck and unemployment in London. He found a job in Covent Garden market, but a strike threw him out of work again. He made up his mind to emigrate, and had begun to plan a new life for himself and his wife and baby, when a rich lady stepped, like a godmother, into the third episode of this boy’s career.

The woman was a native of New Zealand, and she took Jackson and his family under her wing. They travelled to New Zealand with her. Jackson did not forget Mr. Frank Briant, his friend in the time of need, and before he sailed he called on him to say “Good-bye and■ thank you.” “I mean to make good, sir!” was Jackson’s parting remark. The boy who once lingered in a Borstal institution while his sweetheart fought her great battle against Whitehall now lives in his own house, on an estate, amid sylvan surroundings in New Zealand. He is happy and prosperous, and his wife is delighted with her lot.

“It is a genuine case of a lad, who was given a chance to go straight, and went ahead!” said Mr. Fraink Briant.