POVERTY IN AUCKLAND

Otago Witness, Issue 3149, 22 July 1914, Page 5

POVERTY IN AUCKLAND

SOME DISTRESSING CASES. EVIL OF HIGH RENTS, (From Our Own Correspondent.) AUCKLAND, July 16. “Most people have no - idea of the amount of poverty and distress in Auckland,’’ remarked Sister Esther, of the,East Street Mission, in the course of a chat with a Star reporter. “It is not easily seen,” she added, “but it is there all the saipe, and it is not confined to the winter by any means, though, naturally, it is most acute at this time of the year.” Sister Esther has been carrying on a most useful work for over seven years past among the Auckland poor. “The other day,” she said, “1 received a message that a child was seriously ill, and on going to the house —an ordinary cottage—l found that it sheltered no fewer than three families —18 people all together One family—the original tenants—were comparatively well off, but the other two-were practically destitute. In one case the husband was out of work, and in the other he had departed, leaving his wife to support three little children as best she could. One °E these ’families I found had been living for two days on nothing but swede turnips. There was scarcely.- any furniture, and the sick child, which was in a high fever, was lying on a heap of flax upon the tioor, with only a rug over it. I had the child removed to the hospital, but since then another child from the house has sickened, and it looks as if the complaint is typhoid fever. “Another distressing case I met with a short time ago,” continued the sister, “was in a poor district, not far from Queen street. The husband in this instance was a hard-working man, but his wife drank, and I heard that the children were being - neglected. The remedy seemed to be to get*the wife committed for a time to Pakatoa, and to have the children placed in a home. I went round to the house in company with a police-sergeant, and -nobody answered our knock.. We went in and found the wife in the house with several children, and the whole place in a shocking state of dirt and neglect, there were no beds, but on the floor there was a big heap of flax, into which the children had burrowed like little animals. You could see the hole in which they slept. On lifting* up an old coat that I saw lying around 1 found a nine-months-old baby, shockingly dirty, and covered with sores. In the kitchen -there was practically rio furniture beyond a broken chair, which appeared to be used as a candlestick, and the sergeant had to prospect with a stick before lie could see the floor through the layer of dirt "that covered it. The mother seemed heartbroken with the idea of parting with her children, and before five minutes were over I found myself pleading with the sergeant to give her another chance. I am glad to say that the visit has had good effect, for she appears to have given up drinking, and, with help, is keeping her home in much better ordei. One remarkable feature of most of the poor homes visited by Sister Esther is the lack of proper beds' and bedding.’ One .official case she cites is that of a mother and two children whom she found occupying a narrow iron bed, the frame of which was covered with boards. The bedding consisted of an extremely’ thin flock mattress and one blanket and a-half. The remaining member of th'e family a boyslept on a couch. “I had just had a big iron bedstead with bedding complete given to me,” added the sister, in telling of the case. “I have in my mind, too, fully a dozen families I know of, but this one got it. You can imagine how pleased they were.” The sister received almost daily large quantities of cast-off clothing, and this is distributed on a particular day in each W eek. “1 really believe,” she says, “that but for the gifts that come to me you would see many more ill-clothed people in the streets than you do. Clothes and niture are the last things that the very poor can buy. Kent and food have to come first, and higher rents are a big burden. I remember one poor woman who came to me with her shoes worn completely through in the soles, so that one could see the marks of the stones upon her feet. We have quantities of cast-off boots sent to us, but apart from these we spent £ls in the last two months upon stout boots for women and girls. You may scarcely believe it, but every year I meet, I suppose, 150 wives who have pawned their wedding-rings to buy food. In other cases where they threaten to I always try to dissuade them, because they seldom get more than 8s frdm the pawnbroker. Some of them buy ninepenny rings as substitutes.” The rent difficulty, Sister Either finds, is a serious one, as the charge for even the smallest shack in the city is about 10s 6d a week. The result is that many families live in three, or even two, rooms, while widows or wives whose husbands have disappeared are often found living with their children in one room. Overcrowding of this sort, she say , is much more prevalent than most people believe.