GAOL FOR SLIMMING

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23507, 18 November 1939, Page 2 (Supplement)

GAOL FOR SLIMMING

Magistrates Firm with Wayward Girl

JJELEN BUCKERIDGE, like many another young woman, decided that she wanted to have a figure like an artist's model. She began to slim, states the Daily Express, London. All her spending money went to buy slimming tablets. She got slimmer and slimmer. But not as slim as she wished to be. And the other day she heard the Mayor of Leamington say that she must go to prison for six months for slimming. Helen is 18 years old. The story of "her slimming, as it has been told, begins last -May. She then came before the magistrates for the first time. She was accused'of theft.

out of a home several times and to have tried to get slimming tablets. The magistrates, including two women, stated they had reached their decision—that, for her own good, Helen must go to prison.

Helen, not so slim as previously, stood before them wearing a smart green jumper and a saucy hat aslant on her brown wavy hair. She protested :

"j\]y body is my own property to do what I like with. It cannot be against the law to take these tablets, or it would be against the law to sell them.'' The magistrates sentenced her. She shrugged her shoulders and went silently to the no-slimming cells.

Became Neurotic It was said that she had been taking excessive quantities of slimming tablets and she had become neurotic. - The magistrates hound her over for two years On condition that she stopped ■limming and underwent treatment. In July Heien was before the magistrates again, accused of breaking the no-slimming condition of her bindingover. The magistrates put her on probation for a year on condition that she stopped slimming and underwent treatm Noiv she was before the magistrates once more, and was said to broken