£2,200 Damages Against

Sister Mahoney

Mrs. Elizabeth Mahoney, For

merly well-known resident of Eastern Papua, made a special visit to Sydney in November to protest against the newspaper reports of the litigation wherein her daughter, Sister Mahoney, who conducts a private hospital in Bath urst. had been ordered to pay £2,200 to the parents of an infant, which, it was alleged, had had its nose and fingers bit ten off by a New Guinea parrot kept as a net around the hospital.

Mrs. Mahoney declared that the news paper reports of the case had not cor rectly presented the position. She said the child’s nose was not bitten off—it was lacerated, but it healed, and the child was not marked for life. The child’s fingers were not. bitten off; only the tips were bitten—there were nails remaining on two of the three fingers affected.

Mrs. Mahoney said that the extraordi nary amount of damages (awarded for what was wholly an accident) meant the ruin of her daughter’s private hospital

business. She could not pay the amount, or anything like it, and she simply had tq close up.

Mrs. Mahoney said that despite the Court’s decision she was herself positive that the infant was not attacked by the parrot—if it had been, it would have been much more severely injured. The com paratively small injuries inflicted, she said, accorded more with the theory that the attack on the infant was made by a magpie.

Pastor R. H. Tutty, accompanied by his wife and 11-years-old daughter Lucille, arrived in Sydney from Rabaul, New Guinea, by the Nellore on November 19.

He is a missionary for the Seventh Day Adventist Society at Lou Island, in the Admiralty Group, north of the N.G. mainland.

Mr. Chas. G. Evans, of Norfolk Is., married Miss Ethel Dufty at N.I. Metho dist Church on November 16.