COMMITTED TO AVONDALE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3101, 20 August 1913, Page 8

COMMITTED TO AVONDALE.

JOHNSTOX• S GR IE V AXCES.

CLAIM FOR £SOOO

(From Our Own Correspondent.) W ELLINGTON, August 13. The ease of Thomas Henry Johnston, of Waihi, whoso recent committal to, Subsequent escape from and eventual discharge from the Auckland Mental Hospital have already brought his name prominently before the public, is petitioning Parliament through Air Poland lov redress. The petitioner states that he is of opinion that lus committal was cut and dried for the two medical men and the two J.P.’s who were called in by the police, and was prearranged by the police. He considers that the police poisoned the minds of the doctors and J.P.'s by concocted yarns, lie says;—“ When I asked the J.P.'s to give mo a trial on the trumped-up charges they refused, and hurriedly signed the papers, blindly following the prearranged plan of the police without holding converse with me.” He also contends that Dr Craig was not a suitable doctor to call in connection with his examination. for the reason, amongst others, that he was the .only pernson who was conspicuously in and out of tno union's office prior to and after the riot. Mr Johnston proceeds:—“l was adjudged an attempted murderer without a trial, which was refused me —a thing which any Roman, citizen could demand two thousand years ago, and a thing which any British citizen can demand. . . . I have never had a fit nor a semblance of one. nrrr have I had any fainting turn in rny life.” The petitioner goes on to say that when his wife wrote to the superintendent of the hospital a. few days after Ills admittance demanding his immediate release he (the superintendent) wrote stating that they could not find any trace of insanity in her husband whatever. Ho adds: “I was mentally examined after being thrown amongst the worst lunatics from Sunday at 7.30 a.m. until Wednesday at 10 a.m.. and I was examined on Friday at 11.15 a.m.”

la referring to his escape, Mr Johnston says : —“Finding that I had no chance of being let out, I cleared out, and tested my sanity against the attendants and police by evading- them successfully. . . . When I escaped I nid in gor.se till ]1 p.rn., and then ] walked from Avondale to Waihi in 72 hours, starting at 11 p.rn. on Saturday, and 1 had nothin# to eat shoe breakfast flat morning. One meal on Sunday, and n bit of bread on Monday, and plenty of food on Tuesday. I arrived home that night at 11.50. I hid between the mnf and the ceiling of the house at home at Waihi for seven weeks. During that time I wrote over 60,000 words of one MS. and 20,000 of another. Surely this, following on top of all the other trying experiences, was enough to tost the strongest-bra nod man living. Dr. Beattie and the other doctors considered that i never was mad, and never would .go mad.”

The petitioner asks for a grant of £SOOD compensation for the misery, degradation, pain, suffering, and loss of prestige caused to Ids wife, family, and himself, together with the stain of lunacy unjustly and illegally placed upon him, and the stain of inheritance placed upon Ins offspring. . . . Ho further demands that his name shall he eypunged from the records of tho asylum files.

Mrs Johnston is also petitioning Parliament for compensation for herself and children for the cruelty inflicted uiion tnem by the committal of her husband to the mental hospital. She repeats her husband’s denial of the allegations of insanity, and adds:- “The shock and degradation of such cruelty have ruined my health for life, and it is only by the grace of God that I have pulled through.”