PLIGHT OF THE POOR.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 13321, 5 March 1914, Page 3

PLIGHT OF THE POOR.

(Press Assh.-*-By Telegraph— Copyright.) LONDON, March 4. In the House of Lords, Lord Selborne referred to the imprisonment of a. widow, sentenced to six months a few days ago. He said he was informed that the children were well fed but that the mother, who was earning 20s weekly, could , not buy them clothes or send them to , school. She knew that discovery meant prosecution for oveiv crowding and separation from her children of whom she was fond. If this was true it was a most piteous case. The Archbishop of Canterbury contended that the law did not compel Boards of Guardians to break up homes.

A previous cablegram stated: -As the result of a charge laid by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, a widow, a charwoman, was senteheed to six months* imprisonment. She occupied a stinking, dark, fireless room at Clerkenwell, with, three barely clothed, .starving children, bordering on idiocy, and fed wth broken victuals,, which the woman took to the home. The magistrate, described the case as one of medieaval barbarity. •*..