TRICKY TRUANTS.

NZ Truth, Issue 94, 6 April 1907, Page 6

TRICKY TRUANTS.

Some curious details of domestic life are occasionally made public when parents or guardians are summoned for neglecting to send their children to school. One matron, who turned up to answer a charge of this sort at Christchurch t'other, day 'said that the two children mentioned m the information weren't hers ; they belonged' to her daughter, who was living with her. She had led the Truant Officer to believe they were her own, however, and that was why she was summoned. Transpires that both are illegitimate, their mother being an unmarried woman. The pair will have to go to school, however, or there will be trouble. Another mother told the count that she had to depend upon her son, aged -13, for a living. Asked what he did for a crust, the mother replied that he looked after the' lavatory at the Exhibition. He must attend school also. Another told tlie Bench that her children had no. clothes, and she had no husband — an insufficient excuse. One man called upon said his son was a mass of boils and couldn't sit down. He was advised to have the youth dootored. Then there was the case of a cunning girl who seems to be the personification of deceit. She hasn't been to school for some time, yet the young vixen left home every morning with her father, and returned at noon for lunch, and m order to put the old bloke off the track she used to ask him to help her with her alleged home work at night. He never dreamt that his beloved daughter wasn't attendins: the kidwhacking establishment. Tlie Magistrate told the father that the girl was evidently playing double on him, and that he should keep an eve on her, or she would go down hill.