SAVED FROM EVICTION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21159, 16 April 1932, Page 3 (Supplement)

SAVED FROM EVICTION.

RENT PAID IN PENNIES. < NEIGHBOURS COLLECT £4. The eviction of p. family from their oneroom dwelling in Southwark, London, on February 25 led to exciting scenes in which unemployed men defied the law, and which ended, by the generosity of neighbours, with the return of the evicted familv to their home.

Bailiffs, acting on a rourt order, turned Edward Parrott, a, young cripple hawker, his wife, and child out of their home. Furniture was brought from the room, which is in a large tenement building, to the accompaniment of hoots and ■ yells from neighbours of the evicted family. The crowd soon grew to about 2000, and a number of police who were called to the scene had to force their way into the street through a mass of shouting men and women. A squad of unemployed had marched up to the house before the police could arrive, and carried Parrott's furniture back to the room. A dozen men stayed in the room and barricaded the door with a bed and mattresses.

The police warned the men to return the furniture and leave the premises, but they were defiant, and a siege began which lasted all day. A reporter who spoke to the leader of the besieged " army " through the barricaded door was told that they intended to remain in the room until they were starved out.

Mr. Parrott said the rent of the room was 7s 6d a week, and that lie was receiving £1 from the public assistance committee. " I am £4 behind with the rent, and the court granted an order for eviction because I was unable to pay," he said. "We have to live somewhere. So we are staying here until we are driven out." Neighbours saved the situation by making a house-to-house collection in the district. The £4 was raised in pennies. The rent was paid, and the Parrott family were told that they could resume legal occupation-