Those Ashburton Savages.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 5014, 23 May 1889, Page 3

Those Ashburton Savages.

Beferring to the three children “ captured ” by the police at Eoxburgh, near Alford Forest the Guardian says “ We have seen guttersnipes in the slums of London, dirty,unkempt, and in rags, but we never saw children even in the purlieus of St Giles who presented a more deplorable spectacle. Clothes they had none, for the filthy strips of rags which constituted their sole and single garment, and which in color and texture resembled nothing sa much as a dirty lamp cloth, failed to cover their nakedness, ' while heads and legs and feet were wholly innocent of covering other than an incrustation of dirt. They have not the slightest sense of decency or cleanliness, conducting themselves like animals—rather with loss regard to cleanliness than most animals. And all this in the nineteenth century, and in the midst of a civilised community, where but for the interference of the police at the instigatioo of indignant neighbors this unfortunate family wore growing up in a lower condition than that of the lowest of savage races. The thing seems almost incredible, but is nevertheless true.” The Guardian {discusses the question “ what is to ha done with them ?” and finds it a difficult one to answer. The Destitute Persons Act can hardly meet their case, for the father owns 100 acres of land, and be has not ‘‘ deserted ’’ them. The Industrial Schools Act doubtfully meets the case. Section 16 empowers any constable to take before a Besident Magistrate (who has power to commit to an Industrial School) “any child found wandering about ... or sleeping in the open air, and not having any home or settled place of abode, or any visible means of subsistence. In this case the children had been seen sleeping in the open air, but they had a home or “ settled place of abode,” and they had “ visible means of subsistence ” in a bunch of carrots and a handy turuip field. Surely the Guardian is making mountains out of very small mole hills of difficulty.