DRUG ADDICT.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20221, 3 February 1934, Page 13

DRUG ADDICT.

Nurse Whose Career Was; Ruined. 1 i INJECTIONS AND PILLS. The story of a nurse whose pros-j pects of a brilliant career were shat-1 tered when she became a drug addict were told to Mr E. D. Mosley, 5.M.,1 when Maureen Kitteridge Russell, alias I Hazel Mary Carswell, alias Clark, 33 years of age, pleaded guilty in the Magistrate’s Court to a charge of being an idle and disorderly person. Chief-Detective Dunlop said that the accused was by occupation a nurse, although she was not qualified. Prior to coming to Christchurch in August last she had been in Taumarunui. There she showed rather brilliant promise. “ Then she became addicted to drugs, which, she tells me, were taken by way of injections,” continued the chiefdetective. “ She came to Christchurch and we began to get complaints that she was getting drugs by false pretences, and on one occasion she obtained drugs by representing that she wanted them for an urgent case. “ There is no suggestion that she obtained drugs in large quantities, for she obtained only sufficient for her purpose. Since she has been in Christchurch, she has been taking drugs in l pill form, but she has been addicted for the past five years. While in Christchurch, she has been through two rather serious operations in St George’s Hospital, and has just come out of the Christchurch Public Hospital this morning.” A Bad Record. The chief-detective said that the accused had a bad record, starting in 1923, with the last conviction at Auckland in 1932. All the charges related to theft or allied offences. She had assured him that all these offences were committed under the direct influence of drugs. The accused was not brought up in the ordinary sense of an idle and disorderly charge as a vagrant about the streets, but rather to see if something could not be done to check her habit. He suggested that a term at Pakatoa might serve this purpose. The accused was willing to agree to that proposal. The Magistrate: Have you been taking drugs over a considerable puliod of years? The aheused: On and off. The Magistrate: It will be to your own advantage if I send you to Pakatoa. It will give you a chance to get rid of your habit, and enable you to become a decent citizen again. The accused was convicted, and ordered to be detained at Pakatoa for two years, as an habitual inebriate.