STIGMA REMOVED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22826, 10 March 1936, Page 10

STIGMA REMOVED

NURSE VINDICATED NAAIE CLEAR AFTER IS YEARS. After a battle that lasted for 18 years, a woman’s name was vindicated by the Home Secretary in the House of Commons recently. On the evening of November 2, 1917, at Exeter Assizes. Nurse Florence Annie Parkcs was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for the manslaughter of a seven-weeks-old baby, born in the nursing home she then controlled. The mother, a girl of 18. was sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment. It was stated that the child died of starvation. As the two women >cft the court they were met by a hooting, jeering crowd. Nurse Parkcs, at the age of 43, was at a single stroke deprived of her good name and her right to earn her living. What little money she bad she spent on a determined struggle to prove her innocence.

That struggle ended when Air Arthur Reed, M.P. for Exeter, put a question to the Home Secretary in the House of Commons, asking if he was in a position to make a statement about her case. This was' Sir John Simon’s written reply: “My attention has been called to certain signed statements bearing on the question of Aliss Parkos’s responsibility for (be death of the baby, and I have carefully investigated the source and authority of these statements. “ They were not admitted as evidence at the trial on the ground of privilege. T am satisfied that if they had been available from the outset, a wholly different situation would have been created, and Aliss Parkcs would not have been convicted of the offence for which she was sentenced and punished. “ i), these circumstances I have felt it right to recommend that a free pardon should be granted to her in respect of the condition, and suitable compensation is being given her.” Thus the world war informed that Aliss Parkcs. now fil years old, was vindicated. ATr Reed said: ” I have not yet been able to get in touch with Aliss Parkcs to give her the good news. She gave me the postal department nf an Oxford street store as her only address. “ For years.” lie said. she has been fighting for this. She prepared her own ease for the House of Lords, and then never had enough money to get there. Recently she had an interview with the Home Secretary himself. “ She has spent all her money, she has Inst her home. Lately she has been relying on the goodwill of friends to help her along. The Home Secretary does not wish the amount of the compensation to bo made known.”

A ‘‘ free pardon ” implies complete cancellation of a conviction. It is signed by the King, countersigned by the High Sheriff, and sent fo the clerk of the Assize Court where the case was heard. There the records arc cancelled.