POVERTY IN AUCKLAND

Otago Witness, Issue 3455, 1 June 1920, Page 28

POVERTY IN AUCKLAND

SOME DISTRESSING CASES

Our Own Correspondent.) AUCKLAND, May 29

While there ana in Auckland some women fortunate enough to be in a. position where they are liable to bo asked to sign the charter of economy, pledging' themselves not to waste more than a £lO note on a costume, there are many more to whom, says the Auckland Star, such a sum would be wealth beyond the dream of avarice, and instead of that being a limit for one gown it would probably be the limit for a whole family's clothing bill for a year. There is real poverty, even in Auckland. Readers, no doubt, were shocked to read the other day of a case in Sydney in which a woman 29 years of ago had eight children. Her husband earned £3 17s 6d a week, arid she had to go out to work to keep the home together. Sister Esther, a well-known social worker in Auckland, says that if a deputation were arranged in Auckland it could show inistanoos quite as glaring. She quoted a case of a young mother, 34 years of age, with nine children, aged 13 years down to a few months, and the breadwinner earns £3 10s a week* Rent, that bugbear of tb.9 poor, takes lis 6d, and with the pittance that is left this woman has to feed and clothe a household of 11. With blankets and mattresses at their presentprices tho poor cannot- afford them, and some quci3ir makeshifts have to be«used. Already Sister Esther has fitted out 157 families with warm winter things. Rent hits the poor very hard, and this leads to a lot of overcrowding. In one house of six rooms, for instance, there are two families, one of a father and mother and seven children, and the other family a mother and four children. Sister Esther mentioned a fact which shows what a struggle some of the poor have to scrape through. "Many of the men in large families that really cannot make both ends meet have not had a new suit of clothes since they were married," she remarked.