“VICTORIAN SCANDAL.”

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20278, 12 April 1934, Page 1

“VICTORIAN SCANDAL.”

British Migrants Complain of Treatment. LONDON, April G. In a leading article on the return of the former British settlers w’ho have been repatriated from Victoria, the “ News-uhrcnicle ” says that the “ Victorian scandal becomes worse the more it is examined. “It is necessary,” the article continues, “to go back to the days of the American land speculators, whose activities and the suffering of w’hose hapless victims have been immortalised in Dickens’s ‘ Martin Chuzzlewit,’ for a parallel. . “ The direct responsibility for this disastrous experiment rests on the British and Victorian Governments, and can be met only by the fullest compensation.” It quotes Charles James Dixon, one of the ex-settlers, as saying that his wife was an invalid and his second son had arthritis as a result of their experiences in Victoria. He was himself unable to earn more than 2s 6d a week, and there was hardly any food in the larder for weeks at a time. Mrs Albert Lenox said that her husband had relinquished £8 a week in England to go to Victoria, where he lost £BOO. A snake killed her eldest boy.*' “ The past ten years has been a nightmare,” Mrs Lenox said. “We were dumped on land that had been used for wheat farming for sixty years and was consequently non-productive. We lived in a tin shack with holes in the 4-OOf.” Mrs Lawson said that her familv was settled on a block, the soil of which could not be penetrated with a pickaxe in summer and was too wet to plough in winter.