The Lyttelton Times. TUESDAY, MAY 18, 1886.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXV, Issue 7862, 18 May 1886, Page 4

The Lyttelton Times. TUESDAY, MAY 18, 1886.

The Orphanage Committee seems determined to leave no stone unturned to prove its own unfitness. The Master of its choice seems equally determined to prove his own fitness to work for his Committee. We hope his patrons are pleased with him; they ought to be. His zealous labour in what he conceives to be the Committee’s interest, is quite beyond all praise. Unhappily, he has helped to put his friends on the horns of an ugly dilemma. The Committee’s awkward fix is this. Either it is persecuting Mr Ritchey, or it is convicted of the grossest negligence of the Orphanage, and the most utter ignorance of a serious abuse there. If

the charges now raked up against the late Master are not a collection of trumped-up trifles, of a piece with the accusations formerly made against him, then these charges ought to have been made long ago. They amount to this, that the late Master kept the children, or many of them, in a state of dirt and discomfort at night, while it is also insinuated that the children must have been afraid to complain of their discomforts through dread of “ the stick” —whatever that may mean exactly. There is also a charge against the Ritcheys of stealing—or, shall we say wrongfully removing—furniture belonging to the Orphanage when they left the building. This last may be dismissed as nonsensical on the face of it. It is chiefly worth mention as showing the straits to which accusers in search of an indictment may be reduced. The matter of the children’s bedclothing looks more serious; at any rate it is to some extent supported by* the evidence of subordinates employed in the Orphanage. These, both men and women, have made, or been induced to make, statements, in the form of depositions or declaraj tions, contradicting a certain letter off Mr Ritchey’s. Their evidence has beenf very neatly arranged, so neatly that collector would seem to have been one who either knew the value of legal advice and enjoyed the advantage thereof, or who himself had the legal mind. To read their declarations one would almost imagine that the prevailing feeling among the subordinates at the Orphanage was one of burning indignation against the cruel and untruthful Ritchey. If so, it is not a little singular that not a breath of all this indignation came out during Mr Ritchey’s term of office. And it is much more singular that nothing more was heard of it after Mr Ritchey’s doom was pronounced, and during those weeks in which the Committee and its agents were at such infinite pains to ferret out anything and everything on which a case against the Master could be founded. No doubt due weight will be given to all that the Orphanage servants have said or may say. But due weight will also be given to the position of these witnesses. Fair-minded judges will remember that these servants are at the mercy of a body of men who have shown a dogged vindictiveness in hounding down a servant who had displeased them—a vindictiveness quite unusual in kind and extraordinary in degree. Confessions extorted by torture have ages ago ceased to receive any weight. Evidence given by persons peculiarly exposed to pressure and coercion has, in the same way, to be discounted to a certain extent. Moreover, even if accepted as weighty, it is open to reply and explanation. Hitherto Mr Ritchey has been so remarkably successful in meeting attacks upon him from all comers, that his friends, even if inclined to think much of fresh charges, are always able to wait confidently for his answer. Even -should the late Master be strangely unable to clear himself for the first time from the latest of all the little nets that have been spread for him, that will only be so much the worse for the Committee. A managing body which, while making the most repeated and strenuous efforts —according to its own account —to see and know both sides of the picture at the Orphanage, could not find out that in the Orphanage dormitories, under the busy noses of inspecting Committeemen, lay scores of foul and filthy beds, must be singularly devoid of perception. A Committee so marvellously obtuse cannot be too soon relieved of duties which even animosity cannot enable it to perform. Inspectors whose faculties, even when sharpened by vindictiveness, cannot rise to the pitch of seeing or smelling, are hardly the right persons to whom to trust the health of an Orphanage crowded with young children. This is the best case the Committee can make out for itself.