POVERTY AMIDST PLENTY

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 843, 11 December 1929, Page 1

POVERTY AMIDST PLENTY

Home of Bare Rooms FAMILY’S AMAZING CONDITIONS Father of Nine in Gaol Press Association WELLINGTON, Today, “IT is the most shocking case I’ve ever come in contact with I in all my 30 years of experience and I have seen a few bad ones,” said Inspector Fletcher. “Yes,” remarked the borough engineer, Mr. Bush. “It’s damnable that such a thing should happen in a country such as this. Just think of a man being gaoled for three months because he committed a crime to provide food for these bonny children.”

Such were the comments of the officers of the Lower Hutt Borough Council when entering a house in Randwick yesterday afternoon. A tour of the premises showed a series of absolutely bare rooms, except the kitchen, where there was a table, some three feet by two feet, and a pot. There was not so much as a box to ; sit upon. It is the home of a mother and nine children, the eldest aged 12, a girl who was tending her mother, who only last Sunday gave birth to a child with j never a soul in the world to welcome • it, except the woman herself and Ike [ other children. There was not a bed i among them all, not a plate, a dis/i, i nor so much as a knife or fork. The father, a tuberculosis sufferer, ! said to be not mentally strong, after months out of employment, w'as six weeks ago convicted of false pretences and sentenced to three months' gaol. The woman struggled on, too proud to let her case be known, and bit by bit everything in the home tvent to provide food. VISIT FROM INSPECTOR Some weeks ago attention was drawn to the case and Inspector Fletcher went to the house but the woman was too proud to let him in

and assured him that she was all right. However, dire necessity made an application for charitable aid necessary and assistance to the extent of £1 19s 2d a week was given, but this was quite insufficient to make up the leeway and to provide for the expectant mother and eight children living in the bare house. Yesterday morning the true state of affairs became known and houses were ransacked and bed, bedding, food, etc., provided. One woman, ! working in an office, got a day off | and armed with a scrubbing brush, I soap and disinfectant, went round and | cleaned and sweetened up the whole | house and bathed and tidied up the i children. Naturally they think her ‘‘just Christmas.” Still, there is the problem of the future. At the last sitting of the Lower Hutt Magistrate’s Court the State Advances Office obtained an order for possession of the premises, because the instalments had not been paid. Through all the days of the woman’s troubles the house had been unlighted because the power board had cut off the power supply, the accounts being overdue. It will b£ ten weeks before the father is free to work, even if he can get it.