WEEPING WOMAN PREVAILS

Gisborne Times, Volume XXX, Issue 3577, 17 July 1912, Page 7

WEEPING WOMAN PREVAILS

POOR MOTHER’S DEFENCE OF HER DILAPIDATED HOME IN DEVONSHIRE.

A sanitary inspector who went to a cottage, at Moretonhampstead, Devon with orders to pull the roof off found a mother’s tears too much for him. and left without having performed his mission.

The cottage had been declared unfit for habitation, hut the family refused to leave, and the rural council ordered the place to be made uninhabitable. A couple of men, with ladders, picks, and crowbars, accompanied the sanitary inspector when he visited the cottage. The tenant’s wife, with a child in her arms, met the party. “Pull.the roof off, so that I and. my four poor children have to lie in the garden to sleep? You couldn’t be so cruel!” she cried, and burst into tears. . Her child sobbed in sympathy, and three other children, the eldest thirteen, came out and glared in defiance at the strangers. The inspector suggested that the family should go into the workhouse. The woman agreed eventually to let her children go, but said that she herself would not stir, even if they pulled the jdare on her head. The inspector was content to settle the matter by retiring, after giving the woman another warning.