CRUELTY TO BOY

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19024, 26 May 1936, Page 5

CRUELTY TO BOY

three people sentenced MOTHER, FATHER & UNCLE MELBOURNE, May 16. Harry Tait, 60, was .sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment at the Myrtleford Police Court for having wilfully ill-treated his nephew, Clifford Edward Langstaff, aged six. The boy’s mother, Avis Langstaff, for having aided and abetted Tait, was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment, and Harold Langstaff, 35, labourer, the boy’s father, was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for having wilfully and without reasonable excuse negieeted to provide proper food, clothing, and lodging for his three children.

In the charge against Tait, it was stated that leather mittens had been placed on the boy’s hands which were placed behind his back. Two chaff bags had been tied securely over his head and he was chained round the waist to a rail in a vermin-infested fowlhouse, where he was kept for three and a-half hours. In a statement, which was read in court, Tait said that the boy would not. do what his mother had told him to do, and he gave her “cheek.” lie was told to look after the boy when his father went to work. Constable Duncombe said that when he found tho boy, his eyes were red find bloodshot, and ‘ho had great difficulty in breathing. Tait admitted that he had also given the boy a beating with a strap.