BASQUE BOYS ESCAPE

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 55, Issue 3929, 21 July 1937, Page 12

BASQUE BOYS ESCAPE

SALVATION ARMY CRUELTY QUARANTINE RESTRICTIONS MISUNDERSTOOD. London, June 19. Forty-seven Basque refugei boys escaped from the Salvation Army Congress Hall in Clapton, London, this week, but were found the next day. They were being looked after by residents in three roads about half a mile from the hall. When police and Salvation Army officers called for the boys, residents at first refused to surrender them. Allegations were made that the boys escaped because they had been kept in. One resident said: “The boys have been escaping for more than a week now. We have found weals on their hands. They kept on repeating, ‘No, Salvation, No Salvation.’ We did' not encourage them to break out of the hall; they ran away by themselves.” At the Salvation Army hall corrugated iron barricades 12ft high had been erected round the low walls over which the boys had escaped. There are 350 children quartered at the hall. An official said: “The girls have been very good, and the boys are very good in the main, but some of them are perfect little hooligans. We have not been beating them. They got their weals on their hands by beating each other with sticks and birches, part of a game they play. They are very rough. Windows have been broken and other damage has been done. We only had to thrash one boy. He set light to some bedding. “We don’t mind people being softhearted, but it is a pity they should have silly suspicions about us. We have seen many people tempting the boys to climb over the walls by offering them ice cream and sweets. What the people do not understand is that five days after the children came here on May 22, a case of typhoid broke out. Quarantine regulations lasting a fortnight were enforced. We had to keep the children in ■—-and to keep others out. That was our duty. We had to call in the police; we were afraid to go into the locality because of possible violence.”