LIKE BEAST

NZ Truth, Issue 1199, 22 November 1928, Page 5

LIKE BEAST

Young Girl Wild SENT TO GAOL (Prom "N.Z. Truth's" Perth Rep.) Before three justices of the peace at Cunderdin, a Westralian wheatbelt town, an unkempt girl, Alice' Fairhead, pleaded guilty to a charge of vagrancy. About her, Constable Buckley related an amazing story. LIE said that he had received a report from the Avife of a farmer m the district about an incomprehensible female creature whom she had seen about the farmhouse at nights and with whom she suspected her husband of being on too intimate terms. In consequence of this report, Buckley, armed with a warrant, set out to take m charge the half-demented girl.. But it was not without trouble that he caught her. . . Seeing him approaching, she darted into the scrub, and there ensued a mad chase which lasted nearly two hours. When she was captured at last a mile or so away from the home« stead, all resistance ceased. Five years ago sne first came m contact with the farmer whose wife had called the police out to take her. That was m York. Little more than a child, she entered his service and, It is said, fell m love with him. It is alleged that at the age of 17 she became a mother. Notwithstanding this, however, she went on living at the homestead, and continued to dv so till the farmer and his wife moved (o Cunderdin. . They left the girl behind them, but a little later she followed/ The. farmer's wife would not have her in ' the house again, hut the girl, it seema, was determined to stay close by the man she loved. She took up quarters m a dis- I used shed not far from the homestead, and began a life that for a wild animal might have been adequate, but that for a human being — and a girl of comparatively tender years—- must have been terrible. ■ Underfed and underclothed, poor Alice Fairhead lived, heaven knows how! People saw her, a- hunted-' iooking, terrified creature, slipping uncannily .through the scrub or outlined' by night against a wheat-field m the starlight. Dirty and unkempt, she lost- all vanity of appearance. Often she would be seen dressed m the ragged clothing of a boy. Only for a little while and m sordid circumstances did this strarige life cease. Alice was brought to the Cunderdin Hospital, and there became the mother 'of a second child. . The bench conferred, about her .and decided, it would seem, that to be merciful. they must be harsh. They sentenced her to s six months' imprisonment, without hard labor, and added a memorandum that she was to be kept away from habitual criminals. i ■ .