THE TRIALS OF AN "ALIEN"

Southland Times, Issue 17010, 6 April 1912, Page 6

THE TRIALS OF AN "ALIEN"

WHERE THE LAW HAMPERS. (Per United Press Association). PALMERSTON NORTH, April 5. There has boon in Palmerston for the last three weeks Mrs Eliott, widow of an Englishman, daughter of a Scotch father and grandfather and a Eurasian mother. Her father is a tea planter in Ceylon as are her brothers. Mrs Eliott herself h.as two children in Ceylon. She came with Mrs Geo. Stnckwell. of Palmerston, to nurse her grandchild, who was ordered from Ceylon as It was dying of clysentry and malaria, ami brought the child over to New Zealand. The parly came from Ceylon by the Orient Lino. No difficulty was anticipated on leaving Ceylon as to her being able to return there. At Fremantle the difficulties began. Under the alien law a bond for £ltHi was signed From Sydney she desired to return home, but tiie. shipping authorities would not permit it, on the grounds that the undertaking was that she should come on to New Zealand and that tliis engagement must be fulfilled. She came hero duly; hut when it was proposed that she should return the Orient Company communicated through, the Union Steam Ship Company that it could not .under the alien law take her back, and therefore the Union Company cannot take her to Sydney. The nett effect is that a British subject and the wife and daughter of Englishmen and Scotchmen through three generations is blocked from going out of the country because someone holds that she should not have come into it. Mrs Eliott is greatly concerned at the situation to which the Australian arrangements as Interpreted by the Sydney office of the Orient Company have brought her. There is no difficulty on the New Zealand side, as the Union Company, if assured that it will be all right on the Sydney side will take Mrs Eliott to that port.