The Lyttelton Times. SATURDAY, MARCH 2, 1895. GLASGOW LEADS THE WAY.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCIII, Issue 10595, 2 March 1895, Page 4

The Lyttelton Times. SATURDAY, MARCH 2, 1895. GLASGOW LEADS THE WAY.

The Glasgow Police Bill, now before the House of Commons, seems to be one of those bold legislative measures which, like New Zealand’s Undesirable Immigrants Bill, invite world-wide comment. Its provisions are so extraordinary that a cable summary of them has been sent to the Press of Australia. Pines for “ conversing with a lady in the street” and for “having a pack of cards in a private house ” are, according to that summary, proposed to be sanctioned by the Bill*. There is evident elision here, and it would not be safe to laugh until the “ missing words ” are supplied. Palpably, it must only be public converse with a certain class of “lady ” that is forbidden, or mayhap the provision is intended for the protection of respectable women against the approaches of “ fallen men.” Similarly, the clause dealing with playing cards in private houses can only be intended to apply to certain establishments where gambling forms one of several immoral attractions. The Glasgow “bodies,” with all their absurd Pharisaism and advanced social purity ideas, would hardly make themselves ridiculous by proposing to invade the sanctity of home, or to storm the “ castle ” of the law - abiding Scot. Apart from these proposals, which may be capable of rational explanation, the Glasgow Police Bill seems to be drawn on enlightened lines. We incline to the opinion that the attempt to compel butchers to cover up carcases exposed, for sale in their premises is based on sound hygienic no less than aesthetic principles. The filthy, brutal and offensive manner in which the British butcher conducts his business is an outrage on the artistic sense of the community. When, in addition, it is remembered that moist carcases, hanging in open doors and windows, form inviting receptaclesf or thousands of floating disease germs, as well as for city dust, it will be conceded that the public would be the gainers if butchers were compelled by law to minimise these evils. As for the proposal to license and house the newsboys, it is one of a beneficent description, and quite on the lines of recent municipal developments in Glasgow. In that city there has for many years been an extensive system of, “model lodging-houses,” owned and conducted by the Corporation, where the homeless classes can obtain decent lodging at very low rates. It was lately recognised that widows and widowers with families might, in the same way, have the rent problem solved for them by the municipality, and consequently a Family Home was established. The building, of which Lord Provost Bell laid the memorial stone in November last, ia to. cost J 512,000, and. ia ;de-<

signed to accommodate 160 families. Each widow ox* widower and family will have one room provided for them to live in, with common halls for cooking, dining and other general purposes. It is an experiment in <! applied Bellamy ism,” to which, should it prove successful, many municipalities will, a few years hence, be “ looking backward ” with a view to imitation. The intention is to exclude idlers and disorderly characters under very strict by-laws. The Lord Provost, in the course of his remarks at the ceremonial to which we have referred, said that one of the next matters they might take up was the work of providing in some degree for married couples who had gone down in the world through illness or any other innocent cause. The Family Home, like the model lodging-houses, has been projected by the City Improvement Trust, a body which, under parliamentary powers, purchases “ slum ” property and carries out improvements in the streets and dwellings. The work of this Trust, it is claimed, has been largely instrumental in reducing the death rate of Glasgow from 33 per 1000 of the population to about 19 per 1000, which is equivalent to an annual saving of oyer 9000 lives. The housing of newsboys would save from vicious homes, or from absolute homelessness, a large army of street gamins whose condition is one of wretchedness and poverty. In public homes these lads could be imbued with esprit de corps, ambition and proper ideas of conduct. They could have their moral and material wants better attended to than is now possible; and, in fact, municipal oversight would do for them what private effort has done for the boys of the Shoeblack Brigade. In intelligent collectivism, the City Council of Glasgow is leading the world, and is showing an example which the Corporations in newer lands might follow with advantage.