JUDGE CHAPMAN'S WALLET

NZ Truth, Issue 509, 20 March 1915, Page 5

JUDGE CHAPMAN'S WALLET

PHYLHS'S FOOLISH FAILING Two Merry Maidens

There was a fair attendance at the Supreme Court auction mart on Saturday morning last, and the goods, under the hammer of auctioneer Justice Chapman, only realised very- moderate prices. The first to come up was one of those pitiable cases which may or may not have usurped the lines: — Speak gently of the erring low, Poor things, they may have tolled m. vain; Perhaps unkindness made them so— Oh, win them back again. Mr. R. Kennedy, who appeared for the unfair (or unfairly treated) Phyllis Fowler, told 'S'Honor of the girl's age, and that she was m a very weak state of health. Phil was 19 years of age, and was charged "with having concealed' the birth of an Infant prematurely born at Hawera. He submitted that, as the infant was born dead, that the girl had already suffered a great deal. What ho didn't say amounted to a great deal. If he didn't know it, he should have been made acquainted with it, so that he could have told Chapman, the chap who chops off the sentences. It amounts to this. At the inquest held 1 on the infant, Sergeant McNeely's estimate of PhylHs's brain power was that while she was "not absolutely irresponsible, she WAS MENTALLY WEAK." Anyone knowing anything of the poor girl's past history would at once recognise that she is the victim .of transmitted tendencies and the easy victim of any lascivious vulture In the shape of man .who may come along. Phyllis Fowler's case calls loudly on our criminal anthropologists to reconstruct the law, so that girls of Irresponsible and low mentality may be dealt with m a manner befitting the quality of their [ "crime." It is not considered a criminal act on the part of a horse to fatally kick a man. Yet that great "hass" the law may kiok such victims as the girl Fowler, because her mentality, .m • a minor or major, degree, is akin ito the irresponsible horse. It Is 1 another case of "the woman pays," and, at 'the end of three months, the fecund Phyllls v will once more be let loose .with her . falling, probably to again become a victim to man's lust and her own weakness. This is the unfortunate creature's second attempt to populate New Zealand with those of her own kind, and the "hass" should see that it is the last. For "her" sins Phyllis received, three months' Imprisonment "and you will be carefully looked after," said the chap with the stuff they pluck from a horse's prop. So, for three long months, the boys will be safe from Phil. If It had been the embezzlement of anything but a baby she might have been treated as a first-class misdemeanant.