MOVE ON.

NZ Truth, Issue 64, 8 September 1906, Page 4

MOVE ON.

An Indefensible Foolishness.

What is the use of the Magistrates m various of the cities, and towns, and hamlets andiother centres of civilisation and uncivilisation ordering loafers, male and female, and nondescripts, and prostitutes to "leave the place" when brought before the court for fracturing some law by being an excrescence on the face of the earth, and a human cess-pit, and everything that is not nice and polite and respectable. These derelicts go— are compelled to go— to some other place, and aren't wanted there. As a matter of plain fact they aren't wanted anywhere, but as the law won't allow of their being; killed off, the system of giving them their liberty if they "do a git" is wrong m principle. They must get somewhere and they generally e-et to Hell eventually. But the, nondescripts who are sent, or, at least, are ordered to go to some other district, generally haven't twopence and only act m their new locality as they have been acting m the old, and, unless they reform, their method of gaining a< livelihood they get shifted on. This writer thought that the system had been lost, . drifted into oblivion, or had its hair cut by machinery, but it appears not. At the Christchurch Police Court t'other day a common prostitute named Alice White, whose reputation wasn't as white as it might have been, was charged with importunino- passers-by, and she pleaded euilty. The soiled dove was represented by Mr Leatham who said she had never been m court before, and that she would reform. A lot of these unimmaculates promise to reform, but never do. In the case of Alice it appeared that she had been m the town seven months and on the town for the same period. Whether she was a novice or otherwise was not stated. But there are many night love-birds m Christchurch who have been all over the colony and through some of the others. However, Magistrate Bishop let Alice clear out on the implicit understanding that she would leave the city this week. Why the girl couldn't reform m Christchurch as well as elsewhere isn't understandable, but that appears to be a mere detail. They want \to tret rid of her ; to foist her on some other locality where they may not be so particular from a moral point of view. Be that as it \may, there has been a crusade against the women of the town m Christchurch, and a larpie uuantity of petticoat . has been jugged. But where there's a 1 demand there's a supply, and there are numerous new faces on the streets that haven't >J*een seeii there before. Word seems to have got round the colony that the "profession" was m a state of vast vacancy m Christchurch owing to police ■ prosecutions, and that there was a "ood financial time m store for aspirants and members of the demi monde, who were looking out for freshv woods and pastures new, with green horns to work on, and perhaps Ween policemen to deal with. . \