BOY'S PITIFUL STORY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19032, 1 June 1925, Page 7

BOY'S PITIFUL STORY.

MASTER'S ALLEGED CRUELTY. " A BED OF BAGS."[from our own correspondent. ] SYDNEY. May ,22. A pitiful story was related by a 15-year-old farm lad named Eupert Paulsen in the Ballarat (Victoria) Police Court yesterday in a case in which liis employer, William Henry Lavery, was charged on four counts with doing actual bodily harm to the boy. • Paulsen said lie had to sleep on. a bed made of boxes with bags over tliem. Ho was several times chained up in a shed all night. A dog chain was used, and was padlocked round his neck. Once he was chained up to a log from 9 a.m. until milking time in the afternoon. He was fastened up one night and ■ kept without bedclothes. , Because ho had been too ill to work, lie had been chained up and struck once with a whip handle, and another time with a stick, which was broken over liis back. Once he was fastened up because lie had tried to open a safe to get some food. The morning he went away, said Paulsen, lie was driven to Watchem "station by Lavery, who gave him a rail ticket for Ivyneton and Is 9d cash. When he reached Maryborough in the train he was sent to hospital, where he stayed two months. Once Lavery knocked him down and stood with one foot on his neck,- and once lie hit hiiu with a piece of iron piping. Dr. Green said that when he examined the boy at Maryborough his body was covered with so;res, due probably to neglect and dirt. Sergeant Power said Lavery had a reputation of being a hard taskmaster to his boys. Lavery emphatically denied all the allegations. He declared ho had never chained him up, or given orders for it 1 to bo done,;