Untitled

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VI, Issue 616, 3 February 1879, Page 2

We publish elsewhere the letter of Mr. Be" nett, the excellent Chairman of the Gisborne School Committee, denying that the school-house and its surroundings are m the condition stated m a previous issue of the Herald. Mr. Bennett says the soil is not exposed, but is buried on each occasion of removal with great care. Buried ! Where is it buried 1 Why, alongside of where it is taken out ! It is covered up, we know ; so may a sheet of paper cover poisonous matter. But then after all, it is only a sheet of paper between poison and danger of life. Mr. Bennett admits that the closets would be better for removal further from the school, and that the use of chloride of lime would be beneficial. Then, why are the closets not removed at once, and chloride of lime used 1 Mr. Bennett might say it is dangerous to lay poison where ignorant children could get at it ; but he surely would not allow such poison to

remain m the way. Mr. Bennett further says it is false that the atmosphere is so impregnated with pestitential vapour as to render it fatal to health and to demand thatjthe school be closed. Now, many things pestitential are not noticeable to the sense of smell. Typhus fever, cholera, small-pox, diptheria, leave pestilence m their wake, although not observable. "We entreat parents not to send children to the school until the school closets have been removed, until the school walls have been drenched with deoderants, or if they do they do it at the peril of children's lives. Schools have been shut up before to day m other places. In other places they are closed now. Better the children be backward to the extent of a fortnight, or a month, or a year, m their instruction; than be laid on beds of sickness, which may carry them either through or nigh unto the gates of death.