PROTECTION OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN.

Otago Witness, Issue 2975, 22 March 1911, Page 66

PROTECTION OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN.

A SAD RECITAL. (From Our Own Correspondent.) - CHRISTCHURCH, March 16. .At the annual meeting of the Canterbury ; branch of the Society for the Protection, of Women arud Children this afternoon, the president (Mrs A. O'. Sandstein) stated that during tho year 88 new cases were dealt i with, as follows: —Ten coses of ill-used wives, 15 cases of neglected or deserter! wives, four cases of ill-used children, 27 oases of neglected children, four oases of children in unsuitable homes, two oases of deficient children, one case of an -orphan child, three cases of children placed in St. Saviour’s Home, five cases of young girls or boys unhappy in their homes, on© case of adoption, one case of a gird getting into bad company, five oases of affiliation, .five cases of poverty, rand five miscellaneous oases. The committee was also in touch with a large number of the 101 cases- dealt with in former years. The president continued The oases of ill-used wives are often sickening in detail, and loudly call for amendment in our marriage laws. The fact that a drunken husband should be able to use tho vilest epithets to his wife and rain blows upon her person and treat her in other ways not fit to mention without her having any legal remedy for want of witnesses loudly calls for redress. The legislation introduced by our present Minister of Justice to deal with deserting husbands has our highest commendation. In these cases we advise that no warrant for the arrest of her husband on tho charge of having deserted her should be granted to a wife without her being required to give a surety in her own recognisance that she will appear in court to prosecute her husband when he is being tried for having deserted her. But it is -when dealing with neglected or ill-used children that our pity is oftenost stirred to indignation. It is not by any means boarded-out children who suffer most. Those are subject to inspection, and any gross _ cruelty or neglect practised upon them is generally promptly and adequately dealt with. It is the children living in charge of drunken or cruel parents or adopting parents that are exposed to the keenest suffering, and whose cases are tho opost difficult to redress, and it is here that an amendment of tho law is needed. A honie for mentally deficient girls on- the same lines as that for boys at Otekaike ;s urgently needed.” Mr G. W. Russel, M.P., referring to the Government subsidy, impressed on tho society that it should look upon it as a windfall, and said that as far as ho knew there was no prospect of it being repeated. The Rev. F. Rule,

in some remarks advocated the amendment of the law regarding the adoption of children on the lines of the Victorian act, and the enactment of a probationary law in respect to juvenile offenders.