It was encouraging to know that the eggs arrived on the London market in splendid condition and met with ready sales. It was extremely gratifying that the returns received for shipments of eggs had been so satisfactory.
The circle had been assured that the Home market could absorb all the eggs New Zealand could produce.
A troubling issue
The committee appointed to make inquiries regarding mental defectives and sexual offences commenced the hearing of evidence at the Hospital Board Room yesterday. Joan Murray stated that she had occupied the position of a health patrol in Dunedin for two years and a-half, and had been asked by the Royal Society for the Health of Women and Children to attend and give evidence. She thought the information she had set forth showed the necessity for segregating the feeble-minded and protecting the erring by instruction and supervision. By instruction she meant first of all teaching the mother the extreme importance of safeguarding the morality of her child from its earliest years, both in the home and outside it, because they know that quite young children were contaminated, this laying the foundation of an immoral life. Witness said that a good many of the cases were mentally sub-normal. She did not think those who were mentally weak could be left alone. There should be some sensible mother or other relative to take charge of them. She thought that many of the cases should be placed in restraint in some industrial institution. The chairman said that it had been suggested that some sexual offenders should be allowed to marry as a remedy. What was witness’s opinion? Witness said she questioned the wisdom of that course very much. It would not he fair to the woman, nor perhaps to the children that were to come. John Lock said that his duties as probation officer in Dunedin brought him into close touch with cases coming under the scope of the inquiry. He frequently came into contact with cases of feeblemindedness, both in parents and children. He considered that an institution for the purpose would probably have to be established. Mr John Jacobs (secretary to the Otago Hospital Board) wrote that five persons who could be classed as feebleminded were receiving relief from the board.
Dr Alexander Cameron McKillop (superintendent of Seacliff Mental Hospital) said there were at present in Seacliff close on 400 cases of congenital mental defectives. He thought there should be special institutions where this class of patient could he detained and taught some useful occupation and allowed, at all events, to attend to their own personal wants. He recommended legislation regulating marriage so as to ensure that persons of neuropathic tendencies could not marry one similarly afflicted. The Chairman said there were two ways in which the witness’s idea could be carried out. One was by the segregation of all persons with neuropathic inheritance, and the other was by sterilisation. Witness said he favoured segregation, and although it was expensive it would pay in the long run. — ODT, 4.7.1924
