THE POWER OF THE LAW

NZ Truth, Issue 1152, 29 December 1927, Page 6

THE POWER OF THE LAW

(From "N.Z. Truth's" Special Auckland Representative.) TT was a curious little scene. In the witness-box brought there by Probati&n Officer Campbell stood Thomas Linden Hemming, a man of about thirty odd years. The charge against him was that he was £9 in arrears with the maintenance of his two children born to a girl whom he had deceived after he was married. At the table in front of the d esk of the Clerk of the Court stood the young woman he had deceived, the mother of his children. On the other side of Officer Campbell stood Mrs. Hemming, his wife. Hemming pleaded that he was not able to pay for the upkeep of the children; he was earning about £4/10/- a week, but he had his home to keep going. The girl stood up and told Magistrate MoKean that she was earning £2/5/- a week and it took her £2/-/- to keep her children, and with some heat, but in well chosen words, she stated that the man in the witness box had come to places where she worked and had caused a row which had resulted in. her losing more than one job. Sister Pat of the City Mission laid a restraining 1 hand on the young woman saying as she did so that she knew that the girl had worked regularly for her children and was going straight. . The remarks of the Probation Officer might have made the average man quail, but with great self assurance Hemming made efforts to excuse himself. He was unable to dodge the chief fact against him which was that he had lived with the girl who was not yet twenty and was the undisputed father of her children. "Without seeming to know quite how to excuse himself, the man in the box made one or ,two ineffectual attempts to evade the issue but was finally cut short by the Bench — "You were a married man old enough to be her father and yet you deliberately deceived her—." Hemming was given a month at Mount Eden, the "warrant to be suspended if the arrears are paid at the rate of 2/6 per week and the ,ourrent order of 30/- paid up. •