The Distress in Melbourne.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XIX, Issue 6484, 29 September 1892, Page 4

The Distress in Melbourne.

The following extract from a private letter forwarded to a Mosgiel resident by a friend in business in Melbourne, and published by the Advocate, gives some idea of the terrible distress that is. prevalent in that city of booms and land companies :.— tl You have no idea, no possible conception, of thß state of rottenness that Melbourne is in at present ; and, if I said that commercially Melbourne was rotten to the core, I should not be exaggerating matters. You scarcely know in whom to trust, as the implicit confidence of people iv far from easy circumstances have been so shamefully and heartlessly abused by aristocratic swindlers who, perhaps, pan! their groom a larger salary than their unfortunate client received. The distress that has come under my own personal knowledge is appalling, and although there are some who endeavor to place a veneer of conteutedness' over the whole thing, and others who pooh-pooh the statements that are published in our papers, I pray to God that I, at any rate, will never live to again see such cases of destitution in the Australian c#lonies. For thirty years I was, as you know, in Manchester before I saw Australia, and during that time I heard of many cases of hardship and poverty, but a few inquiries I made last week— and I believo that the worst has passed— showed me that in Melbourne, the smiling city of Victoria, where seven years ago I saw nothing but progress and prosperity on every hand, the distress is terrible. There are cases where respectable men and women are almost starving - starving in Melbournefor want of food, and are forced to subsist on whatever they can get. To give yon an example : At Footscray last week a woman told me that 9he and her husband had shared a couple of chops on the Monday (it was then Friday), and that they had been eating potatoes, boiled and roasted alternately, so as to make them more palatable, since that day. The husband had 'got the promise of work,' but promises did not buy them meat or assist them in procuring food. This is not an isolated case— there are many females worse off than that ; some too proud to proclaim their poverty, and others afraid to beg for fear of punishment. Of course I do not mean to say that Melbourne is like a beleagured city — far from it, for you can seebell-toppered gentlemen, ladiesin silks, broughams tilled with happy smiling parties driving away from our leading drapery establishments ; but in the suburbs (I notice that in the suburbs the distress seems more pronounced) there are families whose days are spent in abject despair — the girls too shabby to meet their friends, or perhaps having disposed of their best dresses for the purpose of buying food, while father and mother look on and ask each other whether one being guilty of the larceny of a meal deserves punishment. I have, however, tried to do my part ; I have given when and where I could, ana without posing as a philanthropist, I can cay with truth that if those that can afford it would give more to relieve their suffering brothers and sisters thus would we be free from crime and misery. With the snmmer, however, our prospects are becoming more hopeful."

Mr Labouchere recently stated that the bill for costs owing to him from men whom he had exposed for the public benefit amounted to nearly L 19,000. The last action ho was called on to defend was one for alleged libel brought against him by Mr Horatio Bottoinley, late of the Hansard Union. It was withdrawn on the day of the trial. Mr Labouchere casts the blame for this state of things — that is, for what amounts practically to the blackmailing of newspapers that dare to .speak the truth — on the public. .Several towns in Russia have elected women for mayors on the ground that they were best fitted to be entrusted with the interests of the community. A novelty has been introduced into a Victorian agricultural show programme, in the shape of a road trial for buggy pairs, the distance to be covered extending over ten miles of trying country. The member for Waimea-Picton was hoaxed during the Parliamentary excursion to Westport. At the Denniston banquet he was assured that the oranges upon the table were locally grown, and forthwith he rose and congratulated the Westport Caal Company on the suitability of their reserves for the growtk of semitropical fruits. The Rangitikei Advocate siiys :— It seems that if a man, or, for that matter, any number of men, are drowned in the Raneitikei River, and their bodies are not immediately found, they are likely to remain in the river for ever. There are three bodies of persons in it somewhere at present who have been drowned within the last few months, namely, Christie, WetheralJ, and a Maori, who mot his death while attempting to cross at Rata. Evidently the Rangitikei is to be their grave. '

In London, a governess named Smith produced a will signed by Mr Park, a gentleman of Teddington, bequeathing her L 20,000 in the event of his son not marrying her. The claim failed, and at the instance of the Treasury she is being charged with forgery at the Old Bailey. Ingram Cooke, Alliston Gardiner, Meklethwaite, and Paul, clerks, are charged with complicity. [A late (cablegram states all the defendants were convicted, and received heavy sentences.] A novelty in the way of entertainments is on the tapis at Invercargill. A fund has been started to pay for a band rotunda to be erected in the town, and a concert on new lines in aid of the fund is to be given shortly. The ' first essential required of the performers,' says the Southland Times, ' is that they be wtll known men who have never done the particular thing in public they are going to do. Every mature songster and middle-aged gentleman with a light fantastic talent about the feet is warranted never to have sung or danced on any stage before. On this occasion we are assured that the "most potent, grave and reverend seigneurs " in Southland will frolic in a way their most intimate friends have never conceived as among the possibilities.'