FUTILITY OF PROHIBITION ORDERS.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLIII, Issue 113, 11 May 1909, Page 2

FUTILITY OF PROHIBITION ORDERS.

SHEPHERDING SYSTEM SUG-

GESTED

For some time past the Dunedin Benevolent Trustees have been affording, relief to a poor woman and her five cniidren, but have set their faces against assisting the husband, who is described as a hopeless drunkard, and who- has been in the habit of converting everything saleable into drink while his wife and children, ragged and in want, lived upon charity. It is stated that the Mayor of Dunedin gave the man £1 to purchase the material for sweeping chimneys, but no sooner was he in possession of the articles than they were pawned for money with which to buy liquor. Though the Benevolent Trustees refused to assist the man, there was nothing to prevent his eating the food which that body supplied to his family, and, it is said, he came home drunk and demanded to be fed, greatly depleting their slender stock of provisions.

TUSSLE IN A BEDROOM. On Wednesday Mr F. G. dimming, of the Patients and Prisoners' Aid Society, received word from a member of the Society for the Protection of Women and Children that this man was at his home lying drunk in bed, and that his' removal was necessary. Knowing that the police are not empowered to arrest anyone for being drunk on his own premises, much less in his bed, Mr Gumming went round to eject him. He found the woman, who was in a delicate state of health, black and blue with bruises, and the little children running about barefooted and wretched. Mr Gumming went to the bedroom, where the man lay in a drunken stupor. "Come, up you get and get out of this!' he said, shaking him, and seeing a civilian he showed fight. Thereupon Mr Cumming grappled with him, and after a brief but lively struggle ejected him into the middle of the street, where he was arrested by the police for being drunk in a public place—to wit, Castle Street. This individual appeared before Mr H. Y. Widdowson next morning, at the City Police Court, when for drunkenness he was convicted and discharged, and for the breach of a prohibition order he was fined £5, or two months' imprisonment. Naturally, he went to gaol. Mr Cumming, who appeared for the Society for the Protection of Women ! and Children, in the course of his address, touched upon the fallibility of prohibition orders in this, and [ similar cases. This man was a hopeless drunkard, and, considering that the moral obligation of supporting his wife and five children had failed as a restraining influence, it was hardly surprising that an order from the court should have proved ineffectual. It was impossible for the police to keep an eye on everyone who had been prohibited, and it was his intention in future to shepherd such cases, and to see what moral influence and personal persuasion might accomplish. The society would keep more in touch with prohibited persons/ not as spies or informers, but as-helpers preferring sympathetic advice and encouragement. DRINK AS A DISEASE.

Interviewed subsequently on the case and on the manner in which this "shepherding" was to be carried on, Mr Gumming said that in a case like the one in point, gaol was the only thing; but it was at bsst merely a temporary solution of the difficulty. The man would come out clean and healthy, and his family woTild have been relieved for the time being of an objectionable presence, but there was always the chance of a fresh outbreak following on the release. In such an event the only course left to the society would be to procure a separation order, under which the man would be arrested should he enter the abode of his family. The vice of drunkenness, though it began in social fellowship, often ended in becoming a disease. When a man unduly indulged in alcohol his better self, comprising his moral, intellectual, and reasoning powers, left him. Argument, threats, entreaties were alike futile, for the unfortunate had lost that good within him which could have convinced him that he was mak-

ing wreckage of his life. His invariable reply was: "You may say what you like, but I must have drink. Mr Cumming went on to say that in such cases drink had become a disease, and therefore the victim should be treated more as a patient than a prisoner. On being asked if he considered the disease eradicable, Mr Cumming seemed rather doubtful, but quoted several cases in which attempts at reform, even when the patient had been shut away from procuring drink for months, had proved a most lamentable failure. All the same much good could be done by force of character and a knowledge of the man. "For instance," said Mr Cumming, "I was asked to try to influence a young man who was said to be drunk every night of the week, including Sunday. I went to the house and asked: 'Are you Mr?' 'Yes, I am,' replied a big fellow rising hi a threatening manner, 'and who the are you?' He began to bounce, and, seeing that he showed fteht, I said: .'Now just listen to me for one minute. .It is 27 years since. I did any real fighting, but let me tell you that I have not forgotten how it is done.' It ended in our sitting down and talking his habits over for threequarters of an hour, and I left with his cordial invitation to call again."

EXPLOITERS OF CHARITY. Leading questions by our reporter elicited some apt illustrations of the cunning means employed by derelict dipsomaniacs to exploit charitable societies. "I was confronted one day in my office," said Mr Cumming, "with a haggard individual craving assistance. He said one'of his children had just died, and, let alone paying for the funeral, he had no money to purchase clothing to put upon the body. Seeing that this was indeed a serious case, I told him that I would come round at once. He*begged me not to trouble. He only wanted a 1 very little money. I told him that I was handsomely paid, by the citizens of Dunedin to investigate such cases, and that trouble or no trouble I would go round with him at once. 'You will get help,' I said going to another room for my hat, but when I returned he had vanished, and I realised that his story was a myth. "On another occasion I was accosted by a poor fellow who limped up to me with his hand to his side. His breath came in gasps, and he seemed doubled up with pain.. Three of his ribs had been broken, he said. He had a plaster there on his side. All he asked for was his fare to Milton, where he had friends. 'Let me look at that plaster,' I said. 'Oh, no,' he replied. 'Your fare to Milton depends upon it,' I urged. Then he suddenly stood up to his full height, and the poor, gasping, limping, invalid had become an able-bodied man, raging like a furious beast, and with the foulest tongue imaginable. He asked me to fight, but oh my suggesting an adjournment of 15 minutes for that purpose he slunk unostentatiously away." . • Mr Cumming further intimated that much harm is continually being done in a kindly way by people who allow their sympathies to be worked upon. They say, "Poor fellow,' 'and give the applicant half a crown, without realising that it will be spent in drink and increase his wretchedness. He thought it would be a good thing for people to always make a point of distributing their charity through some society, not necessarily his own. — Dunedin Star.