AFTER THREE MONTHS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3348, 14 October 1911, Page 9

AFTER THREE MONTHS.

MAN’S INHUMANITY TO MAN

Society is bound to take measures to protect itself, hut in doing so it not infrequently inflicts a rast amount of bitter, if unintentional, suffering. Ihe way of the transgressor is hard; but often the rigor of the law makes it unnecessarily hard. The sad story of Geremia Buoncore, of Paris, is a case in point. Sixty-three years of age, he was until a year or so ago nothing, so far as society was concerned, but a number in a convict prison, where he purged the crime of homicide by eighteen years of seclusion. On being released from prison, old and full of infirmities, penniless and hardly able to work, Buoncore was sent to his native town, in the province of Cremona, where lie expected to find shelter with a brother, the only relative, so far as ho know, that lio liad in tho world. But, alas! Ins brother was dead. Unable to find a shelter, the ex-con-vict, shunned by everybody as though he were plague-stricken, decided to transfer himself to Milan. He did so, and had not been there long before he was arrested and again sent to prison for a contravention of the ticket-of-leave regulations. Wliat could the wretched man he expected to know of the laws of public security after bis eighteen years in prison! He served his new "term of imprisonment, and when he was released he was told by the authorities to return to liis native town, and make his abode there. “And how can I live,” lie exclaimed, on hearing the injunction, “if nobody will give me work?” The authorities had no reply except that as the law willed so must he obey. . Then the wretched Buoncore, tired of the struggle against poverty, and convinced that he had nothing more of hope from the society which persecuted him, decided to end a life from which the last ray of hope had vanished. Some three months ago the body of an unknown person was found in the Villoresi Canal, Milan. For severahdays the poor remains were exposed for identification. But there was no recognition, and after being photographed the body was buried in a little cemetery near the commune of Dentate. And now, after three months, a nephew of the unfortunate ex-convict, on seeing by the purest chance, the photograph of the unknown body, recognised the portrait' as that of his uncle. The identification was perfect. When he was a young man Buoncore, working near a threshing machine, had three fingers of his left 'hand crushed, and they had to he amputated; three fingers were missing from the left hand of the unknown body. But of course, the recognition had come too late. Geremia Buoncore had' become a victim of man’s inhumanity to man.