BAILIFFS DEFIED

Taranaki Daily News, 15 July 1930, Page 7

BAILIFFS DEFIED

RESOLUTE MISSIONER. ■ POOR FAMILY'S PREDICAMENT. Just as an auctioneer and a number of dealers were about to seize and sell the household goods of a poor . family at Balmain, Sydney, tho other day, the Rev. S. W. MeKibbin came on the scene and demanded that they should withdraw; At first they asserted that they would proceed with the sale aa the family owed £ll in rent, but the minister defied them to have him arrested. Finally they went away. Subsequently Mr. MeKibbin raised

£lO ' > pay the rent of the family, and . the landlord, when he heard of his > tenants’ circumstances and the fact that the husband was unemployed, reduced the rent from 25s weekly to 17s Gd. . Mr. MeKibbin, who is superintendent . .of the Balmain Central Methodist Mission, said that he had been called to the house by tho wife, who was dis- . tracted at the possibility of about £6O worth of furniture being sold up because of her husband’s adversity and their in.ability to pay £ll overdue rent. “Tho case is only one of many in .this district,” said Mr. MeKibbin, “and .while I dislike newspaper notoriety, the publication of tho facts might possibly minimise a growing evil. There are good landlords and bad landlords, and the bad ones sometimes appear to have little realisation of the hardships and suffering of some of their unfortunate tenants. When a tenant gets behind with his rent tho process of recovering the debt is automatically set in motion. Dealers descend on the house and seize the niture.

“It H a pitiful thing for a husband who has been searching for work to come home to find himself bereft of his meagre possessions, to a wife in. tears,

to hungry children. If a woman says, ‘Save my home,’ what is one naturally compelled to do?”