The Gazette 1973

under the Act he said it eventually transpired that she had left her home in the country and came to Dublin in search of work. She was picked up by gardai, who were obliged to bring her to court. She was over four months pregnant. He had her sent to a convent who catered for girls in her position, but there was no law to oblige her to stay there and be looked after. Yet she could have been sent to prison for three months, and, under the Vagrancy Act, be declared "a rogue and a vagabond". That would be a complete injustice. He praised the gardai for the humane way in which they administered the law, and said the prison service came in for a lot of unjust criticism. The trouble was that prisoners were not graded according to their crim- inal tendencies. Many people went to jail just because they were sick, and these included many drug addicts, who were in need of psychiatric help. It was wrong that our prisons did not have their own psychiatric service. Mr. Donal Barrington, S.C., also spoke. Professor Denis Donoghue, president of the association, presided. The Irish Times (23 October 1973)

marital cases that came to court 28 were due to violence, 16 to adultery, 22 to drink, 9 to mental troubles, 10 to "shotgun'" marriages, 1 to religious differences, 3 to gambling, 2 to meanness on the part of the husband, and 2 to the mother-in-law problem. The breakdown in married life was a social problem, and he did not think that nearly enough had been done to investigate its cause. It was a serious problem, because the family was the basic unit of society, and all our resources should be given to seeing what could be done to prevent it getting worse. Vagrancy Act Justice Good said he regretted that since he spoke a year ago against the Vagrancy Act of 1824—under which a person can be imprisoned for three months for having no visible means of support—nothing had been done to change it. To him it appeared to be basically wrong that it should remain on the statute book, and the sooner it was removed the better. Referring to a recent case of a young girl prosecuted

CORRESPONDENCE

8 South Great George's Street, Dublin. 18th October 1973. Dear Mr. Gavan-Duffy,

BOOKS WANTED Irish Reports complete to 1967 wanted. Reply — Box No. 11/2.

There is a notice displayed in the Stamping Office, Dublin Castle, showing that there is a very large number of documents in that office, awaiting collection by solicitors. The solicitors concerned may have overlooked the collection of the documents, and I would suggest that in the next issue of your Gazette, you insert a paragraph, drawing attention to the notice. Such a paragraph may help solicitors to find docu- ments which they may think were lost. T . FINBARR O ' R E I L LY

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