Farmer mistreated orphan boy

Wellington: About New Year there was a case in the Magistrate’s Court in the Auckland district where a dairy farmer was fined for beating a lad boarded out with him. During the hearing it was alleged that the lad was got out of bed at 4am to help milk cows. The Minister of Education said that he had gone carefully into the particular case, also into the general question of boarding out children on farms. He was satisfied that, given careful supervision, it was better to board out neglected or orphan children than keep them in hundreds in institutions, which were really a sort of prison, and carried a certain stigma which remained with a boy for life. The evidence showed while it was true the boy had been severely thrashed, he was nevertheless wellfed and clothed by the farmer, and the neighbours considered that, on the whole, he was well treated. It was true the lad had given some trouble. The minister said as head of the department he had taken steps which would prevent in the future, he hoped, the possibility of a child being boarded out on an isolated farm and illtreated. There were, he added,

2000 children under the care of the special schools branch of the department and 900 were boarded out.