CRUEL TORTURE

Western Star, 8 November 1935, Page 3

CRUEL TORTURE

CHILDREN SUFFER. MAGISTRATE APPALLED. A man war sentenced to four months’ -si :i emit at the South-Western PolLoudon, for what the magiswr..!. described, as the “most appalling of cruelty to children” in his experience. The magistrate, Mr Barrington Ward, said that a perambulator and a cot in which tho children were found wen- “coffin-likc” and “instruments” of torture.” The man wa s William Poll, aged fiftythree, night watchman. He and Annie Ferris, aged thirtv-six, domestic worker, both of Dorset Road, Glapham, were accused of ill-treating and neglecting the children of which they are father and mother, a boy aged two and a half, and a girl aged three years and a half. ■Mr Arthur Cruttenden, a Lambeth sanitary inspector, said that he went to the house late one afternoon.

COULD NOT SIT UP. When he went to the top floor he saw the boy in a perambulator which was too .small for him. The top wa s boarded across so that the child could not sit up. He was doubled up and twisting his neck to look up and see out between the boards. The girl was in a cot, which was also too small for her to be able to stretch her limbs, and that, too, wn s boarded across tho top so that she could not sit up. , The children were in ia terrified state, and the mother said that she had been keeping them like this for thirteen months in order that they would not fall down stair s or get into any mischief. Inspector Russell, of the N.S.P.C.C., said the children wei’e “like hens in a. coop.” Dr Thomas stated that they were undernourished and anaemic. The boy screamed “No, daddy,” and appeared to Igi terror-stricken when he went near him, although his father was in the room at the time.

Poll, in evidence, 3 aid that the woman had been afraid of the children falling down stairs. He denied ever being cruel to them, but admitted that He m-I----doin took them out because he was i n night- work. The woman did not take them out either. They had been out ;ix <>r eight- times in th 0 hast three or four months.

Mr Barrington Ward remanded tl:e woman in custody for a- week for a medical report.