NASTY NORTH-STREET.

NZ Truth, Issue 91, 16 March 1907, Page 6

NASTY NORTH-STREET.

FOUL AND FILTHY FEMALES.

A Dirty Duo Get Their Due.

Occasionally the police of Mount Cook bestow a little attention on North-street, and when they do the result is always interesting. Northstreet is a nasty, noisome place, full of dirty dens, the resort of the prostitute and her male leech— the bludger. It is the refuge of the dirty drunk and dead-beat, and being the S kind of locality that it is the police ought never to waste a moment of their official time ; but to clear the locality and bring it and its resiI dents back to the realms of respectability. The police have recently devoted a little attention to the slum i quarters and the result of the last official inspection was to bag some specimens of dirty drunken trolls. One of them was Ellen Hitchmough, who is not long back from Lyttelton and who started TO MAKE THINGS HUM from the moment she got back. She has, since her return, been pinched for dirunkenness several • times, and when last Saturday night Sergt. i Beattie caught her pulling up men m Ghuznee-street, offering her unwholesome charms for "hire he promptly pinched her under the Vagrant Act. Being a North-street resident and having a rotten reputation, she did not get much of a hearing when she begged for another chance and promised to give some other centre the pleasure of having her m its midst; the Magistrate deciding to give her six months' hard. Cruel as were the features of Ellen, she was a Venus compared to one Jessie McEwan, another denizen of the noisome locality referred to, who was also up under the Vag. It was unfortunate for Jessie that she had such a young cop, possessing suoh moral susceptibilities as Constable John R. Thompson to deal with. HE POKED HIS NOSE into North-street the other night and found Jessie's street door wide open. Gazing m, he saw a lighted candle, which illumined the gloom and showed to Thompson's shocked sight the spectacle of Jessie lying m a state of speechless shtkker on a bed, with four other dead drunks of the male breed ranged round her. Jessie was then settled. Thompson pinched her and when she got a hearing at the S.M.s Court on Monday she kicked up the devil's own fuss and posed as being the acme of respectability. Then she chirped that some fellow had come to her with £20, which she hoped would prove her means of support. Dr. McArthur : And he would not have it long then. Jessie got three months, the Magistrate rnniarkins; "that will do for you." "What about my furniture ?" jerked out Jessie. "I don't know," said the Magistrate. "'I am not v here to answer conundrums."