CRUELTY TO CHILDREN.

Otago Witness, Issue 2105, 28 June 1894, Page 13

CRUELTY TO CHILDREN.

Special— By Telegraph— Copyright. London, June 23. In reply to a question, the Right Hon. G. Shaw-L°fevre, president of the Local Government Board, said the Government proposed to icquire into the management of the Hackney Training School, from which one of the nurses was recently sentenced to a long lean of imprisonment for ill-treating children. 11-i added that in the meantime the manager had baen suspended.

The Daily Chronicle of May 3 states that the Hackney Board of Guardians discussed at some length a special report brought up by a committee appointed to investigate allegations of cruelty against a nurse at Brentwood Schools (Ellen Gillespie). The report stated that there was evidence to show that tho children had been treated with considerable cruelty. They were compelled to do what was known as " basket drill," carrying baskets of clothing about for periods varying between half an hour and three hours; they had been made to kneel with their bare legs upon the wire guards surrounding the hot-water pipes ; they had been knocked down and got cat heads as a consequence ; the. nurse had struck them with keys and cub their heads open ; she had knocked their heads against the walls, beaten their naked bodies with stinging nettles, immersed their heads in pails of water, and continually .punished the children without authority. The board decided to institute a prosecution upon the evidence, and as was announced in oar cablegrams on Friday, Nurse Gillespib was sentenced to five years' imprisonment.